LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


I 


IGNORANT  ESSAYS 


BY 


KICHARD   DOWLING 


NEW  YORK 
D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPAQ 

1888 


Authorized  Edition. 


CONTENTS. 


PADS 

THE  ONLY  REAL  GnOST  IN  FICTION 1 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS  ..........  30 

LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY 55 

MY  COPY  OF  KEATS 83 

DECAY  OF;TUE  SUBLIME 117 

A  BORROWED  POET  .    .    , 132 

THE  ENGLISH  OPIUM-EATER 160 

A  GUIDE  TO  IGNORANCE    .........  175 


IGNOBANT    ESSAYS. 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION. 

MY  most  ingenious  friend  met  me  one  day, 
and  asked  me  whether  I  considered  I  should 
be  richer  if  I  had  the  ghost  of  sixpence  or  if  I 
had  not  the  ghost  of  sixpence. 

"  What  side  do  you  take  ? "  I  inquired,  for  I 
knew  his  disputatious  turn. 

"  I  am  ready  to  take  either,"  he  answered ; 
"  but  I  give  preference  to  the  ghost " 

"  What ! "  I  said.  "  Give  preference  to  the 
ghost ! " 

"Yes.      You  see,  if  I  haven't  the  ghost  of 


IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


sixpence  I  have  nothing  at  all ;  but  if  I  have 
the  ghost  of  a  sixpence " 

"Well?" 

"  Well,  I  am  the  richer  by  having  the  ghost 
of  a  sixpence." 

"  And  do  you  think  when  you  add  one  more 
delusion  to  those  under  which  you  already 
labour  " — he  and  I  could  never  agree  about  the 
difference  between  infinity  and  zero — "that  you 
will  be  the  better  off  ? " 

"  I  have  not  admitted  a  ghost  is  a  delusion ; 
and  even  if  I  had  I  am  not  prepared  to  grant 
that  a  delusion  may  not  be  a  source  of  wealth. 
Look  at  the  South  Sea  Bubble." 

I  was  willing,  so  there  and  then  we  fell  to 
and  were  at  the  question — or  rather,  the  ques- 
tions to  which  it  led — for  hours,  until  we  finally 
emerged  upon  the  crystallization  of  cast-iron, 
the  possibility  of  a  Napoleonic  restoration,  or 
some  other  kindred  matter.  How  we  wandered 
about  and  writhed  in  that  talk  I  can  no  more 
remember  than  I  can  recall  the  first  articulate 
words  that  fell  into  my  life.  I  know  we  handled 
ghosts  (it  was  broad  day  and  in  a  public  street) 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.      3 

with  a  freedom  and  familiarity  that  must  have 
been  painful  to  spirits  of  refinement  and  reserve. 
I  know  we  said  much  about  dreams,  and  com- 
pared the  phantoms  of  the  open  lids  with  the 
phantoms  of  the  closed  eyes,  and  pitted  them  one 
against  another  like  cocks  in  a  main,  and  I  re- 
member that  the  case  of  the  dreamer  in  Boswell's 
Johnson  came  up  between  us.  The  ca^e  in  Bos- 
well  submitted  to  Johnson  as  an  argument  in 
favour  of  a  man's  reason  being  more  acute  in  sleep 
than  in  waking,  showed  the  phantom  antagonist 
able  to  floor  the  dreamer  in  his  proper  person. 
Johnson  laughed  at  such  a  delusion,  for,  he 
pointed  out,  only  the  dreamer  was  besotted  with 
sleep  he  would  have  perceived  that  he  himself 
had  furnished  the  confounding  arguments  to  the 
shadowy  disputant.  That  is  very  good,  and  seems 
quite  conclusive  as  far  as  it  goes  ;  but  is  there 
nothing  beyond  what  Johnson  saw  ?  Was  there 
no  ghostly  prompter  in  the  scene  ?  No  suggeritore 
invisible  and  inaudible  to  the  dreamer,  who  put 
words  and  notes  into  the  mouth  of  the  oppo- 
nent ?  No  thinner  shade  than  the  spectral 
being  visible  in  the  dream  ?  If  in  our  waking 


IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


hours  we  are  subject  to  phantoms  which  some- 
times can  be  seen  and  sometimes  cannot,  why  not 
in  our  sleeping  hours  also  ?  Are  all  ghosts  of 
like  grossness,  or  do  some  exist  so  fine  as  to  be 
beyond  our  carnal  apprehension,  and  within  the 
ken  only  of  the  people  of  our  sleep  ?  If  we 
ponderable  mortals  are  haunted,  who  can  say 
that  our  insubstantial  midnight  visitors  may 
not  know  wraiths,  finer  and  subtler  than  we, 
may  not  be  haunted  as  we  are  ?  In  physical  life 
parasites  have  parasites.  Why  in  phantom  life 
should  not  ghosts  have  ghosts  ? 

The  firm,  familiar  earth — our  earth  of  this 
time,  the  earth  upon  which  we  each  of  us  stand 
at  this  moment — is  thickly  peopled  with  living 
tangible  folk  who  can  eat,  and  drink,  and  talk, 
and  sing,  and  walk,  and  draw  cheques,  and 
perform  a  number  of  other  useful,  and  hateful, 
and  amusing  actions.  In  the  course  of  a  day  a 
man  meets,  let  us  say,  forty  people,  with  whom 
he  exchanges  speech.  If  a  man  is  a  busy 
dreamer,  with  how  many  people  in  the  course  of 
one  night  does  he  exchange  speech  ?  Ten,  a 
hundred,  a  thousand  ?  In  the  dreaming  of  one 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.      5 

minute  by  the  clock  a  man  may  converse  with 
half  the  children  of  Adam  since  the  Fall  I  The 
command  of  the  greatest  general  alive  would 
not  furnish  sentries  and  vedettes  for  the  army  of 
spirits  that  might  visit  one  man  in  the  interval 
between  one  beat  of  the  pendulum  of  Big  Ben 
and  another ! 

Shortly  after  that  talk  with  my  friend  about 
the  ghost  of  the  sixpence,  I  was  walking  alone 
through  one  of  the  narrow  lanes  in  the 
tangle  of  ways  between  Holborn  and  Fleet 
Street,  when  rny  eye  was  caught  by  the 
staring  white  word  "  Dreams "  on  a  black 
ground.  The  word  is,  so  to  speak,  printed  in 
white  on  the  black  cover  of  a  paper-bound  book, 
and  under  the  word  "  Dreams  "  are  three  faces, 
also  printed  in  white  on  a  black  ground.  Two 
of  the  faces  are  those  of  women :  one  of  a  young 
woman,  purporting  to  be  beautiful,  with  a  star 
close  to  her  forehead,  and  the  other  of  a  witch 
with  the  long  hair  and  disordered  eyt,s  becoming 
to  a  person  of  her  occupation.  I  dare  say  these 
two  women  are  capable  not  only  of  justification, 
but  of  the  simplest  explanation.  For  all  I  know 


IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


to  the  contrary,  the  composition  may  be  taken 
wholly,  or  in  part,  from  a  well-known  picture,  or 
perhaps  some  canon  of  ghostly  lore  would  be 
violated  if  any  other  design  appeared  on  the 
cover.  About  such  matters  I  know  absolutely 
nothing.  The  word  "Dreams"  and  the  two 
female  faces  are  now  much  less  prominent  than 
when  I  saw  the  book  first,  for,  Goth  that  I  am, 
long  ago  I  dipped  a  brush  in  ink  and  ran  a 
thin  wash  over  the  letters  and  the  two  faces ;  as 
they  were,  to  use  artist's  phrases,  in  front  of  the 
third  face,  and  killing  it. 

The  third  face  is  that  of  a  man,  a  young  man 
clean  shaven  and  handsome,  with  no  ghastliness 
or  look  of  austerity.  His  arms  are  resting  on  a 
ledge,  and  extend  from  one  side  of  the  picture 
to  the  other.  The  left  arm  lies  partly  under 
the  right,  and  the  left  hand  is  clenched  softly 
and  retired  in  half  shadow.  The  right  arm  rises 
slightly  as  it  crosses  the  picture,  and  the  right 
wrist  and  hand  ride  on  the  left.  The  fore 
and  middle  fingers  are  apart,  and  point  for- 
ward and  a  little  downward,  following  the  sleeve 
of  the  other  arm.  The  third  finger  droops 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.      7 

still  more  downward,  and  the  little  finger,  with 
a  ring  on  it,  lies  directly  perpendicular  along 
the  cuff  of  the  sleeve  beneath.  The  hand  is 
not  well  drawn,  and  yet  there  is  some  weird 
suggestiveness  in  the  purposeless  dispersion  of 
the  fingers. 

Fortunately  upon  my  coming  across  the  book, 
the  original  cost  of  which  was  one  shilling,  I 
had  more  than  the  ghost  of  a  sixpence,  and  for 
two-thirds  of  that  sum  the  book  became  mine. 
It  is  the  only  art  purchase  I  ever  made  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment ;  I  knew  nothing  of  the 
book  then,  and  know  little  of  it  now.  It  says  it 
is  the  cut-down  edition  of  a  much  larger  work, 
and  what  I  have  read  of  it  is  foolish.  The  worst 
of  the  book  is  that  it  does  not  afford  subject 
for  a  laugh.  Thomas  Carlyle  is  reported  to 
have  said  in  conversation  respecting  one  of 
George  Eliot's  latest  stories  that  "it  was  not 
amusing,  and  it  was  not  instructive;  it  was 
only  dull — dull."  This  book  of  dreams  is  only 
dull.  However,  there  are  some  points  in  it 
that  may  be  referred  to,  as  this  is  an  idle 
time. 


IGNOEANT  ESSAYS. 


"  To  dream  you  see  an  angel  or  angels  is  very 
good,  and  to  dreani  that  you  yourself  are  one  is 
much  better."  The  noteworthy  thing  in  con- 
nection with  this  passage  being  that  nothing  is 
said  of  the  complexion  of  the  angel  or  angels  I 
Black  or  white  it  is  all  the  same.  You  have  only 
to  dream  of  them  and  be  happy.  "  To  dream 
that  you  play  upon  bagpipes,  signifies  trouble, 
contention,  and  being  overthrown  at  law." 
Doubtless  from  the  certainty,  in  civilised  parts, 
of  being  prosecuted  by  your  neighbours  as  a 
public  nuisance.  I  would  give  a  trifle  to 
know  a  man  who  did  dream  that  he  played 
upon  the  bagpipes.  Of  course,  it  is  quite  pos- 
sible he  might  be  an  amiable  man  in  other 
ways. 

"  To  dream  you  have  a  beard  long,  thick,  and 
unhandsome  is  of  a  good  signification  to  an 
orator,  or  an  ambassador,  lawyer,  philosopher, 
or  any  who  desires  to  speak  well  or  to  learn 
arts  and  sciences."  That  "  ambassador  "  gleams 
like  a  jewel  among  the  other  homely  folk.  I 
remember  once  seeing  a  newspaper  contents- 
bill  after  a  dreadful  accident  with  the  words, 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.      9 

"  Death  of  fifty-seven  people  and  a  peer.  "  To 
dream  that  you  have  a  brow  of  brass,  copper, 
marble,  or  iron  signifies  irreconcilable  hatred 
against  your  enemies/'  The  man  capable  of 
such  a  dream  I  should  like  to  see — but  through 
bars  of  metal  made  from  his  own  sleep-zoned 
forehead.  "  If  any  one  dreams  that  he  hath 
encountered  a  cat  or  killed  one,  he  will  commit 
a  thief  to  prison  and  prosecute  him  to  the 
death;  for  the  cat  signifies  a  common  thief." 
Mercy  on  us  !  Does  the  magistrate  who  com- 
mits usually  prosecute,  and  is  thieving  a 
hanging  matter  now  ?  This  is  necromancy  or 
nothing;  prophecy,  inspiration,  or  something 
out  of  the  common  indeed. 

"  To  dream  one  plays  or  sees  another  play 
on  a  clavicord,  shows  the  death  of  relations,  or 
funeral  obsequies."  I  now  say  with  feelings  of 
the  most  profound  gratitude  that  I  never  to  my 
knowledge  even  saw  a  clavicord.  I  do  not  know 
what  the  beastly,  ill-omened  contrivo,nce  is  like. 
The  most  recondite  musical  instrument  I  ever 
remember  to  have  performed  on  is  the  Jew's 
harp;  and  although  there  seems  to  be  some- 


1C  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

thing  weak,  uncandid  and  treacherous  in  the 
spelling  of  "  clavicord,"  I  presume  the  two  are 
not  identical  In  any  case  I  am  safe,  for  I  have 
never  dreamed  of  playing  even  on  the  Jew's 
harp.  Here  however  is  a  cheerful  promise 
from  a  painful  experience — one  wants  some- 
thing encouraging  after  that  terrifying  "  clavi- 
cord/' "  For  a  man  to  dream  that  his  flesh  is 
full  of  corns,  shows  that  a  man  will  grow  rich 
proportionately  to  his  corns."  I  can  breathe 
freely  once  more,  having  got  away  from  out- 
landish musical  instruments  and  within  the 
influence  of  the  familiar  horn. 

As  might  be  expected,  it  is  not  useful  to 
dream  about  the  devil.  Let  sleeping  dogs  lie. 
"  To  dream  of  eating  human  flesh  "  is  also  a 
bad  way  of  spending  the  hours  of  darkness.  It  is 
lucky  to  dream  you  are  a  fool.  You  see,  even  in 
sleep,  the  virtue  of  candour  brings  reward.  "  To 
dream  that  you  lose  your  keys  signifies  anger." 
And  very  naturally  too.  "  To  dream  you  kill 
your  father  is  a  bad  sign/'  I  had  made  up  my 
mind  not  to  go  beyond  the  parricide,  but  I  am 
lured  on  to  quote  this,  "  To  dream  of  eating 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.    11 

mallows,  signifies  exemption  from  trouble  and 
dispatch  of  business,  because  this  herb  renders 
the  body  soluble."  I  will  not  say  that  Nebu- 
chadnezzar may  not  at  one  time  have  eaten 
mallows  among  other  unusual  herbs,  but  I  never 
did.  That  however  is  not  where  the  wonder  creeps 
in.  It  is  at  the  reason.  If  you  eat  mallows  you 
will  have  no  trouble  because  this  herb  renders 
the  body  soluble.  Why  is  it  good  to  render  the 
body  soluble,  and  what  is  the  body  soluble  in  ? 
One  more  and  I  am  done.  "  To  dream  one  plays, 
or  sees  another  play,  upon  the  virginals,  signifies 
the  death  of  relations,  or  funeral  obsequies." 
From  bagpipes,  clavicords,  and  virginals,  we 
hope  we  may  be  protected.  And  yet  if  these  are 
the  only  instruments  banned,  a  person  having 
an  extensive  acquaintance  with  wind  and  string 
instruments  of  the  orchestra  may  be  musical 
in  slumber  without  harm  to  himself  or  threat 
to  his  friends. 

In  the  interpretation  of  dreams  Artemidorus 
was  the  most  learned  man  that  ever  lived.  He 
gave  the  best  part  of  his  life  to  collecting 
matter  about  dreams,  and  this  he  afterwards 


12  IGNORANT  ESSAY& 

put  together  in  five  books.  He  might  better 
have  spent  his  time  in  bottling  shadows  of 
the  moon. 

It  was  however  for  the  face  of  the  man  on 
the  cover  that  I  bought  and  have  kept  the  book. 
The  face  is  that  of  a  man  between  thirty  and 
thirty-five  years  of  age.  It  is  regular  and 
handsome.  The  forehead  leans  slightly  forward, 
and  the  lower  part  of  the  face  is  therefore  a 
little  foreshortened.  It  is  looking  straight  out 
of  the  picture ;  the  shadows  fall  on  the  left 
of  the  face,  on  the  right  as  it  fronts  you.  The 
nose  is  as  long  and  broad-backed  as  the  nose 
of  the  Antinous.  The  mouth  is  large  and  firm 
and  well-shapen,  with  lips  neither  thick  nor 
thin.  The  interval  between  the  nostrils  and 
verge  of  the  upper  lip  is  short.  The  chin  is 
gently  pointed  and  prominent.  The  outline  of 
the  jaws  square.  The  modelling  of  the  left 
cheek  is  defectively  emphasised  at  the  line  from 
above  the  hollow  of  the  nostrils  downward  and 
backward.  The  brows  are  straight,  the  left 
one  being  slightly  more  arched  than  the  right. 
The  forehead  is  low,  broad,  compact,  hard,  with 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.    13 

clear  lines.  The  lower  line  of  the  temples 
projects  beyond  the  perpendicular.  The  hair 
is  thick  and  wavy  and  divided  at  the  left  side, 
depressed  rather  than  divided,  for  the  parting 
is  visible  no  further  up  the  head  than  a  splay 
letter  V. 

The  eyes  are  wide  open,  and  notwithstanding 
the  obtuse  angle  made  by  the  facial  line  in  the 
forward  pose  of  the  head,  they  are  looking  out 
level  with  their  own  height  upon  the  horizon. 
There  is  no  curiosity  or  speculation  in  the  eyes. 
There  is  no  wonder  or  doubt ;  no  fear  or  joy. 
The  gaze  is  heavy.  There  is  a  faint  smile,  the 
faintest  smile  the  human  face  is  capable  of  dis- 
playing, about  the  mouth.  There  is  no  light  in 
the  eyes.  The  expression  of  the  whole  face  is 
infinitely  removed  from  sinister.  In  it  there  is 
kindliness  with  a  touch  of  wisdom  and  pity.  It 
asks  no  question  ;  desires  to  say  no  word.  It  is 
the  face  of  one  who  beyond  all  doubt  knows 
things  we  do  not  know,  things  which  can 
scarcely  be  shaped  into  words,  things  we  are 
in  ignorance  of.  It  is  not  the  face  of  a  charle- 
tan,  a  seer,  or  a  prophet. 


14  IGNOBANT  ESSAYS. 

It  is  the  face  of  a  man  once  ardent  and  hope- 
ful, to  whom  everything  that  is  to  be  known 
has  lately  been  revealed,  and  who  has  come 
away  from  the  revelation  with  feelings  of  un- 
assuageable  regret  and  sorrow  for  Man.  It  says 
with  terrible  calmness,  "I  have  seen  all,  and 
there  is  nothing  in  it.  For  your  own  sakes  let 
me  be  mute.  Live  you  your  lives.  Miserere 
nobis ! " 

My  belief  is  that  the  extraordinary  expression 
of  that  face  is  an  accident,  a  happy  chance,  a 
result  that  the  artist  never  foresaw.  Who  drew 
the  cover  I  cannot  tell.  No  initials  appear  on 
it  and  I  have  never  made  inquiries.  Remember 
that  in  pictures  and  poems  (I  know  nothing  of 
music),  what  is  a  miracle  to  you,  has  in  most 
cases  been  a  miracle  to  the  painter  or  poet  also. 
Any  poet  can  explain  how  he  makes  a  poem,  but 
no  poet  can  explain  how  he  makes  poetry.  He 
is  simply  writing  a  poem  and  the  poetry  glides 
or  rushes  in.  When  it  comes  he  is  as  much 
astonished  by  it  as  you  are.  The  poem  may 
cost  him  infinite  trouble,  the  poetry  he  gets  as 
a  free  gift.  He  begins  a  poem  to  prepare  him- 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.    15 

self  for  the  reception  of  poetry  or  to  induce 
its  flow.  His  poem  is  only  a  lightning-rod 
to  attract  a  fluid  over  which  he  has  no  control 
before  it  comes  to  him.  There  may  be  a  poetic 
art,  such  as  verse-making,  but  to  talk  about 
the  art  of  poetry  is  to  talk  nonsense.  It  is 
men  of  genteel  intellects  who  speak  of  the  art 
of  poetry.  The  man  who  wrote  the  Art  of 
Poetry  knew  better  than  to  credit  the  possible 
existence  of  any  such  art.  He  himself  says 
the  poet  is  born,  not  made. 

I  am  very  bad  at  dates,  but  I  think  Le  Fanu 
wrote  Green  Tea  before  a  whole  community 
of  Canadian  nuns  were  thrown  into  the  most 
horrible  state  of  nervous  misery  by  excessive 
indulgence  in  that  drug.  Of  all  the  horrible 
tales  that  are  not  revolting,  Green  Tea  is  I 
think  the  most  horrible.  The  bare  statement 
that  an  estimable  and  pious  man  is  haunted  by 
the  ghost  of  a  monkey  is  at  the  first  blush 
funny.  But  if  you  have  not  read  the  story  read 
it,  and  see  how  little  of  fun  is  in  it.  The 
horror  of  the  tale  lies  in  the  fact  that  this 
apparition  of  a  monkey  is  the  only  prolallc 


16  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

ghost  in  fiction.  I  have  not  the  book  by  me  as 
I  write,  and  I  cannot  recall  the  victim's  name, 
but  he  is  a  clergyman,  and,  as  far  as  we 
know  to  the  contrary,  a  saint.  There  is  no 
reason  on  earth  why  he  should  be  pursued  by 
this  malignant  spectre.  He  has  committed  no 
crime,  no  sin  even.  He  labours  with  all  the 
sincerity  of  a  holy  man  to  regain  his  health  and 
exorcise  his  foe.  He  is  as  crimeless  as  you  or  I 
and  infinitely  more  faultless.  He  has  not  de- 
served his  fate,  yet  he  is  driven  in  the  end  to 
cut  his  throat,  and  you  excuse  that  crime  by 
saying  he  is  mad. 

I  do  not  think  any  additional  force  is  gained 
in  the  course  of  this  unique  story  by  the  impor- 
tation of  malignant  irreverence  to  Christianity 
in  the  latter  manifestations  of  the  ape.  I 
think  the  apparition  is  at  its  best  and  most 
terrible  when  it  is  simply  an  indifferent  pagan, 
before  it  assumes  the  rule  of  antichrist.  This 
ape  is  at  his  best  as  a  mind-destroyer  when 
the  clergyman,  going  down  the  avenue  in  the 
twilight,  raised  his  eyes  and  finds  the  awful 
presence  preceding  him  along  the  top  of  the 


THE  ONLY  EEAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.     17 

wall.  There  the  clergyman  reaches  the 
acme  of  piteous,  ^insupportable  horror.  In  the 
pulpit  with  the  brute,  the  priest  is  fighting 
against  the  devil.  In  the  avenue  he  has 
not  the  strengthening  or  consoling  reflection 
that  he  is  defending  a  cause,  struggling 
against  hell.  The  instant  motive  enters  into 
the  story  the  situation  ceases  to  be  dramatic 
and  becomes  merely  theatrical.  Every  "  con- 
verted "  tinker  will  tell  you  stirring  stories  of 
his  wrestling  with  Satan,  forgetting  that  it  takes 
two  to  fight,  and  what  a  loathsome  creature  he 
himself  is.  But  the  conflict  between  a  good 
man  and  the  unnecessary  apparition  of  this 
ape  is  pathetic,  horribly  pathetic,  and  full  of 
the  dramatic  despair  of  the  finest  tragedy. 

It  is  desirable  at  this  point  to  focus  some 
scattered  words  that  have  been  set  down 
above.  The  reason  this  apparition  of  the  ape 
appears  probable  is  "because  it  is  unnecessary. 
Any  one  can  understand  why  Macbeth  should 
see  that  awful  vision  at  the  banquet.  The 
apparition  of  the  murdered  dead  is  little  more 
than  was  to  be  expected,  and  can  be  explained 


18  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

in  an  easy  fashion.  You  or  I  never  committed 
murder,  therefore  we  are  not  liable  to  be 
troubled  by  the  ghost  of  Banquo.  In  your  life 
or  mine  Nemesis  is  not  likely  to  take  heroic 
dimensions.  The  spectres  of  books,  as  a  rule, 
only  excite  our  imaginative  fears,  not  our  per- 
sonal terrors.  The  spectres  of  books  have  and 
can  have  nothing  to  do  with  us  any  more  than 
the  sufferings  of  the  Israelites  in  the  desert. 
When  a  person  of  our  acquaintance  dies,  we 
inquire  the  particulars  of  his  disease,  and  then 
discover  the  predisposing  causes,  so  that  we  may 
prove  to  ourselves  we  are  not  in  the  same  cate- 
gory with  him.  We  do  not  deny  our  liability 
to  contract  the  disease,  we  deny  our  likelihood 
to  supply  the  predisposing  causes.  He  died  of 
aneurism  of  the  aorta :  Ah,  we  say,  induced  by 
the  violent  exercise  he  took — we  never  take 
violent  exercise.  If  not  of  aneurism  of  the 
aorta,  but  fatty  degeneration  of  the  heart :  Ah, 
induced  by  the  sedentary  habits  of  his  lattei 
years — we  take  care  to  secure  plenty  of  exercise. 
If  a  man  has  been  careful  of  his  health  and  dies, 
we  allege  that  he  took  all  the  robustness  out  of 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.    19 

his  constitution  by  over-heedful  ness ;  if  he  has 
been  careless,  we  say  he  took  no  precautions  at 
all ;  and  from  either  of  these  extremes  we  are 
exempt,  and  therefore  we  shall  live  for  ever. 

Now  here  in  this  story  of  Green  Tea  is  a 
ghost  which  is  possible,  probable,  almost  familiar. 
It  is  a  ghost  without  genesis  or  justification. 
The  gods  have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  Something, 
an  accident  due  partly  to  excessive  tea-drinking, 
has  happened  to  the  clergyman's  nerves,  and  the 
ghost  of  this  ape  glides  into  his  life  and  sits 
down  and  abides  with  him.  There  is  no  reason 
why  the  ghost  should  be  an  ape.  When  the 
victim  sees  the  apparition  first  he  does  not  know 
it  to  be  an  ape.  He  is  coming  home  in  an  om- 
nibus one  night  and  descries  two  gleaming  spots 
of  fire  in  the  dark,  and  from  that  moment  the  life 
of  the  poor  gentleman  becomes  a  ruin.  It  is  a 
thing  that  may  happen  to  you  or  me  any  day,  any 
hour.  That  is  why  Le  Fanu's  ghost  is  so  horrible. 
You  and  I  might  drink  green  tea  to  the  end  of 
our  days  and  suffer  from  nothing  more  than 
ordinary  impaired  digestion.  But  you  or  I  may 
get  a  fall,  or  a  sunstroke,  and  ever  afterwards 


20  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

have  some  hideous  familiar.  To  say  there  can  be 
no  such  things  as  ghosts  is  a  paltry  blasphemy. 
It  is  a  theory  of  the  smug,  comfortable  kind. 
A  ghost  need  not  wear  a  white  sheet  and  have 
intelligible  designs  on  personal  property.  A 
ghost  need  not  be  the  spirit  of  a  dead  person. 
A  ghost  need  have  no  moral  mission  whatever. 

I  once  met  a  haunted  man,  a  man  who  had 
seen  a  real  ghost ;  a  ghost  that  had,  as  the  ape, 
no  ascertainable  moral  mission  but  to  drive  his 
victim  mad.  In  this  case  too  the  victim  was  a 
clergyman.  He  is,  I  believe,  alive  and  well  now. 
He  has  shaken  off  the  incubus  and  walks  a  free 
man.  I  was  travelling  at  the  time,  and  acci- 
dentally got  into  chat  with  him  on  the  deck  of 
a  steamboat  by  night.  We  were  quite  alone  in 
the  darkness  and  far  from  land  when  he  told  me 
his  extraordinary  story.  I  do  not  of  course  in- 
tend retailing  it  here.  I  look  on  it  as  a  private 
communication.  I  asked  him  what  brought 
him  to  the  mental  plight  in  which  he  had 
found  himself,  and  he  answered  briefly,  "  Over- 
work." He  was  then  convalescent,  and  had 
been  assured  by  his  physicians  that  with  care 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.    21 

the  ghost  which  had  been  laid  would  appear  no 
more.  The  spectre  he  saw  threatened  physical 
harm,  and  while  he  was  haunted  by  it  he  went 
in  constant  dread  of  death  by  violence.  It  had 
nothing  good  or  bad  to  do  with  his  ordinary  life 
or  his  sacred  calling.  It  had  no  foundation  on 
fact,  no  basis  on  justice.  He  had  been  for 
months  pursued  by  the  figure  of  a  man  threaten- 
ing to  take  away  his  life.  He  did  not  believe 
this  man  had  any  corporeal  existence.  He  did 
not  know  whether  the  creature  had  the  power 
to  kill  him  or  not.  The  figure  was  there  in  the 
attitude  of  menace  and  would  not  be  banished. 
He  knew  that  no  one  but  himself  could  see  the 
murderous  being.  That  ghost  was  there  for 
him,  and  there  for  him  alone. 

Respecting  the  Canadian  nuns  whose  convent 
was  beleaguered  and  infested  by  ghostly  enemies 
that  came  not  by  ones  or  twos  but  in  battalions, 
I  had  a  fancy  at  the  time.  I  do  not  intend 
using  the  terminologies  or  theories  of  the  dis- 
secting room,  or  the  language  of  physiology 
found  in  books.  I  am  not  sure  the  fancy  is 
wholly  my  own,  but  some  of  it  is  original. 


22  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

I  shall  suppose  that  the  nerves  are  not  only 
capable  of  various  conditions  of  health  and 
disease,  but  of  large  structural  alteration  in 
life;  structural  alteration  not  yet  recorded  or 
observed  in  fact ;  structural  alteration  which,  if 
you  will,  exists  in  life  but  disappears  instantly 
at  death.  In  fine,  I  mean  rather  to  illustrate 
my  fancy  than  to  describe  anything  that  exists 
or  could  exist.  Before  letting  go  the  last  strand 
of  sense,  let  me  say  that  talking  of  nerves  being 
highly  strung  is  sheer  nonsense,  and  not  good 
nonsense  either.  The  muscles  it  is  that  are 
highly  strung.  The  poor  nerves  are  merely 
insulated  wires  from  the  battery  in  the  head. 
Their  tension  is  no  more  affected  by  the  mes- 
sages that  go  over  them,  than  an  Atlantic  cable 
is  tightened  or  loosened  by  the  signals  in- 
dicating fluctuations  in  the  Stock  Exchanges  of 
London  and  New  York. 

The  nerves,  let  us  suppose,  in  their  normal 
condition  of  health  have  three  skins  over  the 
absolute  sentient  tissue.  In  the  ideal  man  in 
perfect  health,  let  us  say  Hodge,  the  man  whose 
privilege  it  is  to  "  draw  nutrition,  propagate,  and 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.    23 

rot,"  the  three  skins  are  always  at  their  thick- 
est and  toughest.  Now  genius  is  a  disease,  and 
it  falls,  as  ladies  of  Mrs.  Gamp's  degree  say, 
"on  the  nerves/'  That  is,  the  first  of  these 
skins  having  been  worn  away  or  never  supplied 
by  nature,  the  patient  "  sees  visions  and  dreams 
dreams/'  The  man  of  genius  is  not  exactly 
under  delusions.  He  does  not  think  he  is  in 
China  because  he  is  writing  of  Canton  in 
London,  but  his  optic  nerve,  wanting  the  outer 
coating,  can  build  up  images  out  of  statistics 
until  the  images  are  as  full  of  line  and  colour 
and  as  incapable  of  change  at  will  as  the  image 
of  a  barrel  of  cider  which  occupies  Hodge's 
retina  when  it  is  imminent  to  his  desires, 
present  to  his  touch.  The  sensibility  of  the 
nerves  of  genius  is  greater  than  the  sensibility 
of  the  nerves  of  Hodge.  Not  all  the  eloquence 
of  an  unabridged  dictionary  could  create  an 
image  in  Hodge's  mind  of  a  thing  he  had  never 
seen.  From  a  brief  description  a  painter  of 
genius  could  make  a  picture — not  a  likeness  of 
course — of  Canton,  although  he  had  never  been 
outside  the  four  corners  of  these  kingdoms. 


24  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

The  painting  would  not,  in  all  likelihood,  be  in 
the  least  like  Canton,  but  it  would  be  very  like 
the  image  formed  in  the  painter's  mind  of  that 
city.  In  the  painter  such  an  image  comes  and 
goes  at  will.  He  can  either  see  it  or  not  see  it 
as  he  pleases.  It  is  the  result  of  the  brain 
reacting  on  the  nerve.  It  relies  on  data  and 
combination.  It  is  his  slave,  not  his  master. 
Before  it  can  be  formed  there  must  be  great 
increase  of  sensibility.  Hodge  is  crude  silver, 
the  painter  is  the  polished  mirror.  The  painter 
can  see  things  which  are  not,  things  which  he 
himself  makes  in  his  mind.  His  invention  is 
at  least  as  vivid  as  his  memory. 

I  suppose  then  that  the  man  of  genius, 
the  painter  or  poet,  is  one  who,  having  lost  the 
first  skin,  or  portion  of  the  first  skin  of  his 
nerves,  can  create  and  see  in  his  mind's  eye 
things  never  seen  by  the  eye  of  any  other  man, 
and  see  them  as  vividly  as  men  of  no  genius 
can  see  objects  of  memory. 

Now  peel  off  the  second  skin.  The  more  ex- 
quisitely sensitive  or  the  innermost  skin  of  the 
nerve  is  exposed.  Things  which  the  eye  of 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.    25 

genius  could  not  invent  or  even  dream  of  are 
revealed.  A  drop  of  putrid  water  under  the 
microscope  becomes  a  lake  full  of  terrifying 
monsters  large  enough  to  destroy  man.  Heard 
through  the  microphone  the  sap  ascending  a 
tree  becomes  loud  as  a  torrent.  Seen  through 
a  telescope  nebulous  spots  in  the  sky  become 
clusters  of  constellations.  Divested  of  its 
second  skin  the  nerve  becomes  sensitive  to 
influences  too  rare  and  fine  for  the  perception 
of  the  optic  nerve  in  a  more  protected  state. 
Beings  that  bear  no  relation  whatever  to  weight 
or  the  law  of  impenetrability,  float  about  and 
flash  hither  and  thither  swifter  than  lightning. 
The  air  and  other  ponderable  matter  are  nothing 
to  them.  They  are  no  more  than  the  shadows 
or  reflections  of  action,  the  imperishable  progeny 
of  thought.  Here  lies  disclosed  to  the  partly 
emancipated  nerve  the  Canton  of  the  painter's 
vision.  Here  the  city  he  made  to  himself  is  as 
firm  and  sturdy  and  solid  and  full  of  life  as  the 
Canton  of  this  day  on  the  southern  coast  of 
China.  Here  throng  the  unrecorded  visions  of 
all  the  poets.  Here  are  the  counterfeits  of  all 


26  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

the  dead  in  all  their  phases.  Here  float  the 
dreams  of  men,  the  unbroken  scrolls  of  life 
and  action  and  thought  complete  of  all  beings, 
man  and  beast,  that  have  lived  since  time  began. 
In  the  world  of  matter  nothing  is  lost ;  in  the 
world  of  spirit  nothing  is  lost  either. 

If  instead  of  taking  the  whole  of  this  imag- 
inary skin  off  the  optic  nerve,  we  simply  injure 
it  ever  so  slightly,  the  nerve  may  become  alive  to 
some  of  these  spirits  ;  and  this  premature  percep- 
tion of  what  is  around  all  of  us,  but  perceived  by 
few,  we  call  seeing  ghosts.  It  may  be  objected 
that  all  space  is  not  vast  enough  to  afford  room 
for  such  a  stupendous  panorama.  When  we  begin 
to  talk  of  limits  of  space  to  any  thing  beyond  our 
knowledge  and  the  touch  of  our  inch-tape,  we 
talk  like  fools.  There  is  no  good  in  allotting 
space  with  a  two-foot  rule.  It  is  all  the  same 
whether  we  divide  zero  into  infinity  or  infinity 
into  zero.  The  answer  is  the  same ;  "  I  don't 
know  how  many  times  it  goes."  Take  a  cubic 
inch  of  air  outside  your  window  and  see  the 
things  packed  into  it.  Here  interblent  we  find 
all  together  resistance  and  light  and  sound  and 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.    27 

odour  and  flavour.  We  must  stop  there,  for  we 
have  got  to  the  end;  not  of  what  is  packed  into 
that  cubic  inch  of  air,  but  to  the  end  of  the 
things  in  it  revealed  to  our  senses.  If  we  had 
five  more  senses  we  should  find  five  more 
qualities ;  if  we  had  five  thousand  senses,  five 
thousand  qualities.  But  even  if  we  had  only 
our  own  senses  in  higher  form  we  should  see 
ghosts. 

If  the  third  skin  were  removed  from  the 
optic  nerve  all  things  we  now  call  opaque 
would  become  transparent,  owing  to  the  naked 
nerve  being  sensitive  to  the  latent  light  in 
every  body.  The  whole  round  world  would 
become  a  crystal  ball,  the  different  degrees  of 
what  we  now  call  opacity  being  indicated  merely 
by  a  faint  chromatic  modification.  What  we 
now  regard  as  brilliant  sunlight  would  then 
be  dense  shadow.  Apocalyptic  ranges  of 
colour  would  be  disclosed,  beginning  with  what 
is  in  our  present  condition  the  least  faint 
trace  of  tint  and  ascending  through  a  thousand 
grades  to  white,  white  brighter  far  than  the 
sun  our  present  eyes  blink  upon.  Burnished 


28  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

brass  flaming  in  our  present  sun  would  then  be 
the  beginning  of  the  chromatic  scale  descending 
in  the  shadow  of  yellow,  burnished  copper  of 
red,  burnished  tin  of  black,  burnished  steel  of 
blue.  So  intense  then  would  the  sensibility  of  the 
optic  nerve  become  that  the  satellites  attendant 
on  the  planets  in  the  system  of  the  suns,  called 
fixed  stars,  would  blaze  brighter  than  our  own 
moon  reflected  in  the  sea.  To  the  eye  matter 
would  cease  to  be  matter  in  its  present,  gross 
obstructive  sense.  It  would  be  no  more  than 
a  delicate  transparent  pigment  in  the  wash  of 
a  water-colour  artist.  The  gross  rotundity  of 
the  earth  would  be,  in  the  field  of  the  human 
eye,  a  variegated  transparent  globe  of  reduced 
luminousness  and  enormous  scales  and  chords 
of  colour.  The  Milky  Way  would  then  be  a 
concave  measureless  ocean  of  prismatic  light 
with  pendulous  opaline  spheres. 

The  figures  of  dreams  and  ghosts  may  be  as 
real  as  we  are  pleased  to  consider  ourselves. 
What  arrogance  of  us  to  say  they  are  our  own 
creation  1  They  may  look  upon  themselves  as 
superior  to  us,  as  we  look  upon  ourselves  as 


THE  ONLY  REAL  GHOST  IN  FICTION.     29 

superior  to  the  jelly-fish.  No  doubt  we  are  to 
ghosts  the  baser  order,  the  spirits  stained  with 
the  woad  of  earth,  low  creatures  who  give  much 
heed  to  heat  and  cold,  and  food  and  motion. 
They  are  the  sky-children,  the  chosen  people. 
They  are  nothing  but  circumscribed  will 
wedded  to  incorporeal  reasons  of  the  nobler  kind, 
and  with  scopes  the  contemplation  of  which 
would  split  our  tenement  of  clay.  They  are 
the  arch-angelic  hierarchs  of  man,  the  ultimate 
condition  of  the  rase,  the  spirit  of  this  planet 
distilled  by  the  sun. 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS. 

IN  no  list  I  met  of  the  best  hundred  toots, 
when  that  craze  took  the  place  of  spelling-bees 
and  the  fifteen  puzzle,  do  I  recollect  seeing 
mention  made  of  my  two  favourite  works.  These 
two  books  stand  completely  apart  in  my  esteem, 
and  if  I  were  asked  to  name  the  volume  that 
comes  third,  I  should  have  to  make  a  speech  of 
explanation.  The  first  of  them  is  not  in  prose 
or  verse,  it  is  not  a  work  of  theology  or  philo- 
sophy or  science  or  art  or  history  or  fiction  or 
general  literature.  It  is  at  once  the  most  com- 
prehensive and  impartial  book  I  know.  This 
paragraph  is  assuming  the  aspect  of  a  riddle. 
Being  in  a  mild  and  passionless  way  a  lover  of  my 
species,  I  am  a  leather  of  riddles.  So  I  will  go 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  31 

no  further  on  the  downward  way,  but  declare 
the  name,  title,  and  style  of  my  book  to  be 
NuttalTs  Standard  Dictionary. 

I  am  well  aware  there  is  a  great  deal  to  be 
said  against  Nuttall's  Dictionary  as  a  dictionary, 
but  I  am  not  speaking  of  it  in  that  sense.  I  am 
treating  it  as  a  dear  companion,  a  true  friend, 
a  vade  mecum.  Let  those  who  have  a  liking  for 
discovering  spots  in  the  sun  glare  at  the  orb 
until  they  have  a  taste  for  nothing  else  but  spots 
in  the  sun.  I  find  Nuttall  so  close  to  my  affec- 
tions that  I  can  perceive  no  defects  in  him.  I 
cannot  bear  to  hold  him  at  arm's  length,  for 
critical  examination.  I  hug  him  close  to  me, 
and  feel  that  while  I  have  him  I  am  almost 
independent  of  all  other  books  printed  in  the 
English  language. 

Cast  your  eyes  along  your  own  bookshelves  of 
English  authors ;  every  word,  liberally  speaking, 
that  is  in  each  and  every  volume  on  your  shelves 
is  in  my  Nuttall !  Here  is  the  juice  uf  the  lan- 
guage, from  Shakespeare  to  Huxley,  in  a  con- 
centrated solution.  Here  is  a  book  that  starts 
by  telling  you  that  A  is  a  vowel,  and  does  not 


IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


desert  you  until  it  informs  you  that  zythum  is 
a  beverage,  a  liquor  made  from  malt  and  wheat ; 
a  fact,  I  will  wager,  you  never  dreamed  of 
before !  And  between  A  and  zythum,  what  a 
boundless  store  of  learning  is  disclosed  !  This  is 
the  only  single- volume  book  I  know  of  which 
no  man  living  is  or  ever  can  be  the  master. 
Charles  Lamb  would  not  allow  that  diction- 
aries are  books  at  all.  In  his  days  they  were 
white-livered  charlatans  compared  with  the 
full-blooded  enthusiast,  Nuttall. 

If  such  an  unkind  thing  were  desirable  as  to 
diminish  the  conceit  of  a  man  of  average  reading 
and  intelligence,  there  is  no  book  could  be  used 
with  such  paralysing  effect  upon  him  as  this 
one.  It  is  almost  impossible  for  any  student  to 
realise  the  infinite  capacity  for  ignorance  with 
which  man  is  gifted  until  he  is  brought  face 
to  face  with  such  a  book  as  Nuttall.  The  list  of 
words  whose  meanings  are  given  occupies  771 
very  closely  printed  pages  of  small  type  in  double 
column.  The  letter  A  takes  up  from  1  to  52. 
How  many  words  unfamiliar  to  the  ordinary 
man  are  to  be  found  in  this  fifteenth  part  of 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  33 

the  dictionary  !  On  the  top  of  every  folio  there 
occur  four  words,  one  at  the  head  of  each  column. 
Barring  the  right  of  the  candidates  in  ignorance 
to  guess  from  the  roots  how  many  well-informed 
people  know  or  would  use  any  of  the  following 
words — absciss,  acidimeter,  acroteleutic,  admini- 
cular,  adminiculator,  adustion,  aerie,  agrestic, 
allignment,  allision,  ambreine,  ampulla,  ampul- 
laceous,  android,  antiphonary,  antiphony,  apan- 
thropy,  aponeurosis,  appellor,  aramaic,  aretology, 
armilla,  armillary,  asiarch,  assentation,  asymptote, 
asymptotical,  aurate,  averruncator,  aversant,  axo- 
tomous,  or  axunge  ?  And  yet  all  these  are  at 
the  heads  of  columns  under  A  alone !  Take, 
now,  one  column  haphazard  perpendicularly,  and 
with  the  same  reservation  as  before,  who  would 
use  anti  maniac,  antimask,  antimasonic,  anti- 
meter,  antimonite,  antinephritic,  antinomian, 
antinomy,  antipathous,  antipedobaptist,  anti- 
peristaltic,  antiperistasis,  or  antiphlogistic  ?  The 
letter  A  taken  along  the  top  of  the  pages  or 
down  one  column  is  not  a  good  letter  for  the 
confusion  of  the  conceited;  because  viewed  across 
the  top  of  the  page  it  is  pitifully  the  prey  of 


34  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

prefixes  which  lead  to  large  families  of  words, 
and  viewed  down  the  column  (honestly  selected 
at  haphazard),  it  is  the  bondslave  of  one  prefix. 
When,  however,  one  starts  a  theory,  it  is  not 
fair  to  pick  and  choose.  I  have,  of  course,  es- 
chewed derivatives  in  coming  down  the  column; 
across  the  column  I  did  not  do  so,  as  the  chance 
of  a  prime  word  being  at  the  bottom  of  one 
column  and  its  derivate  at  the  top  of  the  next 
ought  to  count  two  in  my  favour.  I  am  aware 
this  claim  may  be  disputed ;  I  have  disputed  it 
with  myself  at  much  too  great  length  to  record 
here,  and  I  have  decided  in  my  own  favour. 

Of  course  the  mere  reading  of  the  dictionary 
in  a  mechanical  way  would  produce  no  more 
effect  than  the  repetition  of  numerals  abstracted 
from  things.  There  is  no  greater  suggestiveness 
in  saying  a  million  than  in  saying  one.  But 
what  an  enlargement  of  the  human  capacity 
takes  place  when  a  person  passes  from  the 
idea  of  one  man  to  the  idea  of  a  million  men. 
Take  the  first  word  quoted  from  the  head 
of  the  column.  I  had  wholly  forgotten  the 
meaning  of  absciss.  I  cannot  even  now  re- 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  35 

member  that  I  ever  knew  the  meaning  of  it, 
though  of  course  I  must,  for  I  was  supposed 
to  have  learned  conic  sections  once.  Why  any 
one  should  be  expected  to  learn  conic  sections  I 
cannot  guess.  As  far  as  I  can  now  recall,  they 
are  the  study  of  certain  possible  systems  and 
schemes  of  lines  in  a  wholly  unnecessary  figure. 
I  believe  the  cone  was  invented  by  some  one 
who  had  conic  sections  up  his  sloeve,  and 
devised  the  miserable  spinning  of  the  triangle 
merely  to  gratify  his  lust  of  cruelty  to  the 
young.  The  only  one  use  to  which  cones  are 
put,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  is  for  a  weather 
signal  on  the  sea  coast.  The  only  section  of 
a  cone  put  to  any  pleasant  use  is  a  frustum 
when  it  appears  in  the  bark  of  the  cork  tree ; 
and  even  this  conic  section  is  not  of  much  use 
to  pleasure  until  it  is  removed  from  the  bottle. 
Conic  sections  are  reprehensible  in  another 
way.  They  are,  in  the  matter  of  difficulty, 
nothing  better  than  impostors.  They  are  really 
"  childlike  and  bland,"  and  will,  when  you  have 
conquered  your  schoolboy  terror  of  them,  be 
found  agreeable  after-dinner  reading. 


36  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

But  I  must  return  to  Nuttall.  The  sys- 
tematic study  of  the  book  is  to  be  deplored. 
It  is,  like  the  Essays  of  Elia,  nob  to  be  read 
through  at  a  sitting,  but  to  be  dipped  into 
curiously  when  one  is  in  the  vein.  The  charm 
of  Lamb  is  in  the  flavour ;  and  one  cannot  reach 
the  more  remote  and  finer  joys  of  taste  if 
one  eats  quickly.  There  is  no  cohesion,  and 
but  little  thought  in  Nuttall.  It  is  as  a  spur, 
an  incentive,  to  thought  I  worship  the  book,  and 
as  a  storehouse  for  elemental  lore.  You  have 
known  a  thing  all  your  life,  let  us  say,  and 
have  called  it  by  a  makeshift  name.  You  feel 
in  your  heart  and  soul  there  must  be  a  more 
close-fitting  appellation  than  you  employ  for  it, 
and  you  endure  a  sense  of  feebleness  and  disper- 
sion of  mind.  One  day  you  are  idly  glancing 
through  your  Nuttall,  and  suddenly  the  clouds, 
the  nebulous  mists  of  a  generalized  term,  roll 
away,  and  out  shines,  clear  and  sharply 
defined,  the  particular  definition  of  the  thing. 
From  childhood  I  have,  for  example,  known  a 
pile-driver,  and  called  it  a  pile-driver  for  years 
and  years.  All  along  something  told  me  pile- 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  37 

driver  was  no  better  than  a  loose  and  off-hand 
way  of  describing  the  machine.  It  partook  of 
the  barbarous  nature  of  a  hieroglyphic.  You 
drew,  as  it  were,  the  figure  of  a  post,  and  of 
a  weight  descending  upon  it.  The  device  was 
much  too  pictorial  and  crude.  Moreover,  it 
was,  so  described,  a  thing  without  a  history.  To 
call  a  pile-driver  a  pile-driver  is  no  more  than 
to  describe  a  barn-door  cock  onomatopoetically 
as  cock-a-doodle-doo — a  thing  repellent  to  a 
pensive  mind.  But  in  looking  over  Nuttall 
I  accidentally  alighted  on  this:  "Fistuca, 
fis' — tu-ka,  ,9.  A  machine  which  is  raised  to  a 
given  height  by  pulleys,  and  then  allowed 
suddenly  to  fall  on  the  head  of  a  pile;  a 
monkey  (L.  a  rammer)/*  Henceforth  there  is, 
in  my  mind,  no  need  of  a  picture  for  the 
machine.  So  to  speak,  the  abstract  has  become 
concrete.  I  would  not,  of  course,  dream  of 
using  the  word  fistuca,  but  it  is  a  great  source 
of  internal  consolation  to  me.  Besides,  I  attain 
with  it  to  other  eminences  of  curiosity,  which 
show  me  fields  of  inquiry  I  never  dreamed  of 
before. 


IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 


I  have  not  met  the  word  monkey  in  this  sense 
until  now.     I  look  out  monkey  in  my  book, 
and  find  one  of  the  meanings  "  a  pile-driver," 
and  that  the  word  is  derived  from  the  Italian 
"  monnat  contraction  for  madonna."     Up  to  tins 
moment  I  did   not  know  from  what  monkey 
was  derived,  although  I  had  heard  that  from 
monkey  man  was  derived.      All  this  sets  one 
off  into  a  delicious  doze  of  thought  and  keeps 
one  carefully  apart  from  his  work.     For  "  who 
would  fardels  bear  to  groan  and  sweat  under 
a  weary"  load  of  even  pens,  when  he  might 
lie  back  and  close  his  eyes,  and  drift  off  to  the 
Rome  of  Augustus  or  the  Venice  of  to-day  ? 
Philology  as  mere  philology  is  colourless,  but 
if  one  uses   the  records  of  verbal  changes  as 
glasses  to  the  past  and  present,  what  panchroma- 
tic hues  sweep  into  the  pale  field  of  the  diction- 
ary !     What  myriads  of  dead  men  stand  up  out 
of  their  graves,  and  move  once  more  through 
scenes  of  their  former  activities!     What  reim- 
positions  of  old  times  on  old  earth  take  place  ! 
What  bravery  of  arms  and  beauty  of  women 
are  renewed  ;  what  glowing  argosies,  long  rnoul- 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  39 

dered,  sparkle  once  more  in  the  sun!  What 
brazen  trumpets  blare  of  conquest,  and  dust 
of  battle  roll  along  the  plain !  What  pleni- 
tude of  life,  of  movement,  of  man  is  revealed ! 
A  dictionary  is  to  me  the  key-note  in  the 
orchestra  where  mankind  sit  tuning  their  reeds 
for  the  overture  to  the  final  cataclysnj  of  the 
world. 

My  second  book  would  b3  Whi taker's  Alma- 
nack. Owing  to  miserable  ill-luck  I  have  not 
been  able  to  get  a  copy  of  the  almanac  for 
this  year.  I  offered  fair  round  coin  of  the  realm 
for  it  before  the  Jubilee  plague  of  ugliness  fell 
upon  the  broad  pieces  of  her  most  gracious 
Majesty.  But,  alas  !  no  copy  was  to  be  had.  I 
was  too  late  in  the  race.  All  the  issue  had  been 
sold.  The  last  edition  of  which  I  have  a  copy  is 
that  for  1886.  I  have  one  for  each  year  of  the 
ten  preceding,  and  I  cannot  tell  how  crippled 
and  humiliated  I  feel  in  being  without  one  for 
1887. 

This  is  another  of  the  books  that  Charles 
Lamb  classes  among  the  no-books.  As  in  the 
case  of  Nuttall,  there  was  no  Whitaker  in  his 


40  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

day,  and  certainly  no  almanac  at  all  as  good. 
At  first  glance  this  book  may  seem  dry  and 
sapless  as  the  elm  ready  sawn  for  conversion 
into  parish  coffins.  But  how  can  anything  be 
considered  dry  or  dead  when  two  hundred  thou- 
sand of  its  own  brothers  are  at  this  moment 
dwelling  in  useful  amity  among  our  fellowmen? 
It  in  one  way  contrasts  unfavourably  with 
almanacs  which  can  claim  a  longer  life,  there 
are  no  vaticinations  in  it.  But  if  the  gift  of 
prophecy  were  possessed  by  other  almanacs,  why 
did  they  not  foretell  that  they  would  be  in  the 
end  known  as  humbugs,  and  cut  their  conceited 
throats  ?  I  freely  own  I  am  a  bigot  in  this 
matter ;  I  have  never  given  any  other  almanac 
a  fair  chance,  and,  what  is  worse,  I  have  firmly 
made  up  my  mind  not  to  give  any  other  one 
any  chance  at  all.  What  is  the  good  of  being 
loyal  to  one's  friends  if  one's  loyalty  is  at  the 
beck  of  every  upstart  acquaintance,  no  matter 
how  great  his  merits  or  how  long  his  purse  ?  I 
place  my  faith  in  Whitaker,  and  am  ready 
to  go  to  the  stake  (provided  it  is  understood 
that  nothing  unpleasant  takes  place  there) 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  41 

chaunting    my    belief    and    glorying    in    my 
doom. 

If  you  took  away  Whitaker's  Almanack 
from  me  I  do  not  know  how  I  should  get  on. 
It  is  a  book  for  diurnal  use  and  permanent 
reference.  One  edition  of  it  ought  to  be  printed 
on  bank  note  paper  for  the  pocket,  and  another 
on  bronze  for  friezes  for  the  temple  of  history. 
It  is  worth  all  the  Livys  and  Tacituses  that  ever 
breathed  and  lied.  It  is  more  truthful  than  the 
sun,  for  that  luminary  is  always  eight  minutes 
in  advance  of  where  it  seems  to  be.  It  is  as 
impartial  and  veracious  as  fossilising  mud.  It 
contains  infinitely  more  figures  than  Madame 
Tussaud's,  and  teaches  of  everything  above  and 
under  the  sun,  from  stellar  influences  to 
sewage. 

How  is  the  daily  paper  to  be  understood 
lacking  the  aid  of  Whitaker  ?  Who  is 
the  honourable  member  for  Berborough,  of 
whom  the  Chanceller  of  the  Exchequer  spoke 
in  such  sarcastic  terms  last  night  ?  For  what 
place  sits  Mr.  Snivel,  who  made  that  most 
edifying  speech  yesterday  ?  How  old  is  the 


42  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

Earl  of  Champagne,  who  has  been  appointed 
Governor  of  Labuan  ?  Where  is  Labuan  ?  What 
is  the  value  in  English  money  of  £197,000, 
and  2,784,000  roubles?  What  are  the  chances 
of  a  man  of  forty  (yourself)  living  to  be  a 
hundred  ?  and  what  is  the  chance  of  a  woman 
of  sixty-four  (your  mother-in-law)  dying  next 
year  ?  How  much  may  one  deduct  from  one's 
income  with  a  view  to  income  tax  before  one 
needs  begin  to  lie  ?  What  annuity  ought  a  man 
of  your  age  be  able  to  get  for  the  five  thousand 
pounds  you  expect  on  the  death  of  your  mother- 
in  law  ?  How  much  will  you  have  to  pay  to 
the  state  if  you  article  your  son  to  a  solicitor  or 
give  him  a  little  capital  and  start  him  in  an 
honest  business  as  a  pawnbroker  ?  How  old  is 
the  judge  that  charged  dead  against  the  pri- 
soner whom  the  jury  acquitted  without  leaving 
the  box  ?  What  railway  company  spends  the 
most  money  in  coal  ?  legal  charges  ?  palm  oil  ? 
Is  there  anything  now  worth  a  gentleman's 
while  to  smuggle  on  his  return  from  the  Con- 
tinent ?  What  is  the  tonnage  of  the  ironclad 
rammed  yesterday  morning  by  another  ironclad 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  43 

of  the  Channel  squadron  ?  When  may  one 
begin  to  eat  oysters  ?  What  was  the  most  re- 
markable event  last  year  ?  How  much  longer 
is  it  likely  to  pay  to  breed  farmers  in  England? 

These  are  only  a  few,  very  few,  of  the 
queries  Whitaker  will  answer  cheerfully  for 
you.  Indeed,  you  can  scarcely  frame  any  ques- 
tions to  which  it  will  not  make  a  reply  of  some 
kind  or  other.  It  contains,  moreover,  either 
direct  or  indirect  reference  to  every  man  in  the 
United  Kingdoms  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 
If  you  occupy  a  prominent  official  position  in 
any  walk  in  life,  you  will  find  yourself  herein 
mentioned  by  name.  If  you  are  a  simple  and 
prudent  trader,  you  will  have  your  name  and 
your  goods  described  elaborately  among  the 
advertisements.  If  you  come  under  neither  of 
these  heads  you  are  sure  to  be  included,  not 
distinguished  perhaps  personally,  under  the 
statistics  of  the  Insane  or  Criminal  classes. 

All  the  information  on  the  poims  indicated" 
may  be  said  to  lie  within  the  parochial  domain 
of  the  book.  But  it  has  a  larger,  a  universal 
scope,  and  takes  into  view  all  the  civilized  and 


(BKA 

or  TJS; 


44  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

half  civilized  nations  of  all  the  earth.  It  con- 
tains multitudinous  facts  and  figures  about 
Abyssinia,  Afghanistan,  Annam,  Argentine  Re- 
public, Austro-Hungary,  Baluchistan,  Belgium, 
Bokhara,  Bolivia,  Borneo,  Brazil,  Bulgaria, 
Eastern  Roumelia,  Burrnah,  Corea,  Central 
America,  Chili,  China,  Cochin  China,  Colombia, 
Congo  State,  Denmark,  Dominican  Republic, 
Ecuador.  Egypt,  France,  Germany,  Greece, 
Hawaiian  Islands,  Hayti,  Italy,  Japan,  Liberia, 
Madagascar,  Mexico,  Montenegro,  Morocco, 
Nepal,  Netherlands,  Oman,  Orange  Free  State, 
Paraguay,  Persia,  Peru,  Portugal,  Roumania, 
Russia,  Sarawak,  Servia,  Siam,  Sokoto,  Spain, 
Sweden  and  Norway.  Switzerland,  Tibet, 
Transvaal,  Tripoli,  Tunis,  Turkey,  United 
States,  Uruguay,  Venezuela,  and  Zanzibar  ! 

The  list  takes  away  one's  breath.  The  mere 
recital  of  it  leaves  one  faint  and  exhausted. 
Passing  the  most  elementary  knowledge  of  these 
nations  and  countries  through  the  mind  is  like 
looking  at  a  varying  rainbow  while  the  cars  are 
solicited  by  a  thousand  tunes.  The  names,  the 
mere  names,  of  Mexico  and  Brazil  stop  my  heurt 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  45 

with  amazement.  The  Aztecs  and  the  Amazon 
call  up  such  visions  of  man  in  decay  and  nature 
in  naked  strength  that  I  pause  like  one  in  a 
gorgeous  wood  held  in  fear  by  its  unfami- 
liarity.  What  has  the  Amazon  done  in  the 
ages  of  its  unlettered  history  ?  What  did  the 
Aztecs  know  before  they  began  to  revert  to 
birds  ?  Then  Morocco  and  Tripoli,  what  memo- 
ries and  mysteries  of  man !  And  Sokoto — of 
which  little  is  known  but  the  name ;  and  that 
man  was  here  before  England  was  dissevered 
from  the  mainland  of  Europe.  Turkey,  as  it 
even  now  lies  crippled  and  shorn,  embraces 
within  its  stupendous  arms  the  tombs  of  the 
greatest  empire  of  antiquity.  Only  to  think 
of  China  is  to  grow  old  beyond  the  reach  of 
chroniclers.  Compared  with  China,  Turkey, 
India,  and  Russia,  even  Greece  and  Rome  are 
mushroom  states,  and  Germany  and  Erance 
virgin  soil. 

But  when  I  am  in  no  humour  for  contem- 
plation and  alarms  of  eld  I  take  up  my 
Whi taker  for  1886,  and  open  it  at  page  285. 

There    begins    the    most    incredible    romance 

4 


46  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

ever  written  by  man,  and  what  increases  its 
incredibility  is  that  it  happens  to  be  all  true. 

At  page  285  opens  an  account  of  the  British 
Empire.  The  first  article  is  on  India,  and  as 
one  reads,  taking  in  history  and  statistics  with 
alternate  breaths,  the  heart  grows  afraid  to  beat 
in  the  breast  lest  its  motion  and  sound  might 
dispel  the  enchantment  and  bring  this  "  miracle 
of  rare  device"  down  about  one's  head.  The 
opening  statement  forbids  further  progress  for 
a  time.  When  one  hears  that  "the  British 
Empire  in  India  extends  over  a  territory  as 
large  as  the  continent  of  Europe  without 
Russia,"  it  is  necessary  to  pause  and  let  the 
capacity  of  the  mind  enlarge  in  order  to  take 
in  this  stupendous  fact  with  its  stupendous 
significances. 

Here  are  254  millions  of  people  living 
under  the  flag  of  Britain  !  Here  is  a  vast  coun- 
try of  the  East  whose  history  goes  back  for  a 
thousand  years  from  this  era,  which  knew 
Alexander  the  Great  and  was  the  scene  of 
Tamerlane's  exploits,  subject  to  the  little  island 
on  the  western  verge  of  modern  Europe.  Here, 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  47 

paraded  in  the  directest  and  most  prosaic  fashion, 
are  facts  and  figures  that  swell  out  the  fancy 
almost  intolerably.  Here  is  one  feudatory  state, 
one  dependent  province,  almost  as  populous  as 
the  whole  empire  over  which  Don  Pedro  II. 
reigns  in  South  America.  Here  is  a  public 
revenue  of  eighty  millions  sterling  a  year,  and 
Calcutta,  including  suburbs,  with  a  population 
close  upon  a  million.  Here  are  no  fewer  than 
fifty-three  towns  and  cities  of  more  than  fifty 
thousand  people  each.  Here  is  a  gross  number 
of  seven  hundred  and  fourteen  thousand  towns 
and  villages  !  Is  not  this  one  item  incredible  ? 
Just  three  quarters  of  a  million,  not  of  people  or 
even  houses,  but  of  "towns  and  villages!" 
The  population  of  Madras  alone  is  five-sixths  of 
that  of  the  United  Kingdom,  that  of  the  .North- 
West  Provinces  and  Oudh  considerably  more,  and 
that  of  Bengal  nearly  twice  as  much  as  England, 
Ireland,  Scotland,  and  Wales  together.  Tho 
Native  States  have  many  more  inhabitants 
than  any  country  in  Europe,  except  Russia. 
Bombay  equals  Spain.  The  Punjaub  exceeds 
Turkey  in  Asia.  Assam  exceeds  Turkey  in 


48  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


Europe.  The  Central  Provinces  about  equal  Bel- 
gium and  Holland  together ;  British  Burmah, 
Switzerland.  Berar  exceeds  Denmark,  and  all 
taken  together  contain  more  than  the  combined 
populations  of  the  United  States  of  America, 
Austria,  Germany,  France,  Turkey,  Italy, 
Spain,  Portugal,  Holland,  and  Belgium !  All 
ours  absolutely,  or  in  the  feudatory  leash ;  with 
more  Mohammedans  than  are  to  be  found  in 
the  Sultan's  dominions,  and  a  larger  revenue 
than  is  enjoyed  by  any  country  on  earth  except 
England,  France,  United  States  of  America, 
Austria,  and  Russia ! 

These  are  facts  and  figures  enough  to  set  one 
dreaming  for  a  montb.  This  is  not  an  age  for 
epic  poetry.  It  is  exceedingly  unlikely  any  poet 
in  the  present  age  will  seek  the  framework  for 
his  great  work  in  the  past.  The  past  was  all 
very  well  in  its  own  day  until  it  was  found  out. 
Certitudes  in  bygone  centuries  have  been  shaken. 
The  present  time  is  wildly  volcanic.  Now  the 
hidden,  throbbing,  mad,  fierce,  upheaving  fires 
bulge  out  the  crust  of  earth  under  fabrics  whil- 
om regarded  as  indestructible,  and  split  their 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  49 

walls,  and  warp  their  pillars,  and  clioko  their 
domes.  It  was  a  good  thing  for  Milton  and 
Dante  they  lived  and  wrote  long  ago,  for  the 
iconoclasts  of  to-day  are  trying  to  build  a  great 
wall  across  heaven  and  tear  up  the  sacred 
pavement  of  hell.  They  tell  us  the  Greek 
armies  were  a  mob  of  disorderly  and  timid  cits, 
and  that  speculations  as  to  the  reported  deal- 
ings of  Dr.  Faustus  with  any  folk  but  respect- 
able druggists  are  too  childish  for  the  nursery 
or  Kaffirs.  The  golden  age  is  no  longer  the  time 
that  will  never  come  again.  The  past  is  a  fire 
that  has  burnt  out,  a  flame  that  has  vanished. 
To  kneel  before  what  has  been  is  to  worship 
impotent  shadows.  Up  to  this  man  has  been 
wandering  in  the  desert,  and  until  now  there 
have  not  been  even  trustworthy  rumours  of 
the  land  of  promise.  But  to  us  has  come  a 
voice  prophesying  good  things.  The  Canaan 
of  the  ages  is  in  the  future  of  time. .  Taking 
this  age  at  its  own  estimate  I  have  long 
thought  the  subject  for  the  finest  epic  lying 
within  possibility  in  our  era  is  the  build- 
ing of  the  railway  to  India.  Into  a  history  of 


50  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


that  undertaking  would  flow  all  the  affluents 
of  the  ancient  world.  The  stories  of  Baalbec 
and  Nineveh  that  are  finished,  and  of  Aleppo 
and  Damascus  that  survive,  would  fall  into  this 
prodigious  tale  of  peaceful  conquest.  The  line 
would  have  for  marge  Assyria  on  one  hand, 
Egypt  on  the  other ;  it  would  reach  from  the 
land  of  the  Buddhist  through  the  land  of  the 
Mohammedan  to  the  land  of  the  Christian.  It 
would  be  a  work  undertaken  in  honour  of  the 
modern  god,  Progress,  through  the  graves  of  the 
oldest  peoples,  to  link  the  three  great  forms  of 
faith.  All  the  action  of  the  epic  would  take  place 
on  earth,  and  all  the  actors  would  be  men.  There 
would  be  no  need  for  evolving  the  god  from  the 
machine,  for  the  machine  itself  would  be  the 
god.  It  would  be  the  history  of  man  from  his 
birth  till  this  hour.  It  would  be  most  fitly 
written  in  English,  for  English  is  the  most 
capacious  and  virile  language  yet  invented 
by  man. 

But  a  mere  mortal,  such  as  I,  cannot  stay  in 
India  always,  or  even  abide  for  ever  by  the 
way.  Although  I  have  Whitakcrs  Almanack 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  51 

before  me  all  the  time,  I  have  strayed  a 
little  from  it.  In  thinking  of  the  lands  through 
which  that  heroic  line  of  railway  would  pass,  I 
have  almost  forgotten  the  modest  volume  at 
my  elbow.  Yet  fragile  as  it  looks,  one  volume 
similar  to  it  will  last  as  long  as  the  Pyramids, 
will  come  in  time  to  be  as  old  as  the  oldest 
memory  is  now;  that  is,  if  the  ruins  of 
England  endure  as  long  as  those  of  Egypt,  for 
a  copy  of  it  lies  built  up  under  Cleopatra's 
Needle. 

I  turn  over  the  last  page  of  "  British  India  " 
in  my  Almanack.  We  are  not  yet  done  with 
orient  lands  and  seas.  The  article  over-leaf  is 
headed  "Other  British  Possessions  in  the 
East."  Here,  if  one  wants  incitement  towards 
prose  or  verse,  dreaming  or  doing,  commerce 
or  pillage,  is  matter  to  his  hand.  The 
places  one  may  read  of  are — Aden,  Socotra, 
Ceylon,  Hong-Kong,  Labuan,  British  North 
Borneo,  and  Cyprus.  Then  in  my  book 
comes  "The  Dominion  of  Canada,"  with  its 
territory  "  about  as  large  as  Europe " !  and  a 
revenue  equal  to  Portugal,  which  discovered 


52  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

and  once  held  India.  After  Canada  come 
"  Other  American  Possessions,"  including  British 
Guiana,  which,  except  for  the  sugar  of  Deme- 
rara,  is  little  heard  of;  it  occupies  a  space 
of  earth  as  large  as  all  Great  Britain.  So  little 
do  people  of  inferior  education  know  of  this 
dependency,  that  once,  when  a  speaker  in  the 
House  of  Commons  spoke  of  the  "island  of 
Demerara,"  there  was  not  a  single  member 
present  who  knew  that  Demerara  was  not  an 
island,  but  part  of  the  mainland  of  South 
America.  Last  in  the  list  comes  British 
Honduras,  about  as  big  as  Wales. 

After  America,  we  have  our  enormous  out- 
lying farm  in  the  southern  hemisphere, "  British 
Possessions  in  Australasia."  There  the  land 
owned  by  England  is  again  about  the  size  of 
Europe  !  Then  follow  "  British  Possessions  in  the 
West  Indies,"  small  in  mileage,  great  in  fertility 
and  richness  of  produce,  and  with  a  population 
twice  that  of  Eastern  Eoumelia.  The  "  British 
Possessions  in  Africa"  are  considerably  larger 
than  Franco,  with  about  half  as  many  inhabit- 
ants as  Denmark.  The  territories  owned  in 


THE  BEST  TWO  BOOKS.  53 

the  Southern  Atlantic  are  Ascension,  the  Falk- 
land Islands,  South  Georgia,  and  St.  Helena. 
This  prodigious  list  ends  with  the  European 
Possessions,  namely,  Malta,  Gibraltar,  Heligo- 
land, the  Channel  Islands,  and  Isle  of  Man. 

By  this  time  the  hand  is  tired  writing  down 
the  mere  names  of  the  riches  belonging  to  Great 
Britain.  Towards  the  close  of  my  list  from 
Whitaker  my  energy  drooped,  and  a  feeling  of 
enervating  satiety  came  upon  me.  I  am  sur- 
feited with  splendours,  and,  like  a  tiger  filled 
with  flesh,  I  must  sleep.  But  in  that  sleep 
what  dreams  may  come  !  How  the  imagination 
expands  and  aspires  under  the  stimulus  of  a 
page  of  tabulated  figures !  How  the  fancy  is 
excited,  provoked,  by  the  spectacle  of  an  endless 
sea  in  which  every  quarter  of  the  globe  affords 
a  bower  for  Britannia  when  it  pleases  her 
aquatic  highness  to  adventure  abroad  upon  the 
deep,  into  the  farthest  realms  of  the  morning, 
into  the  regions  of  the  dropping  sun.  Here,  in 
my  best  two  books,  are  the  words  of  the  most 
copious  language  that  man  ever  spoke,  and  the 
facts  and  figures  of  the  greatest  realm  over 


54  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


which  man  ever  ruled.  Civis  Eomanus  sum ! 
I  will  sleep.  I  will  dream  that  I  am  alone 
with  my  two  books.  I  will  speak  in  this 
imperial,  this  dominant  dialect,  as  I  move  by 
sea  and  land  among  the  peoples  who  live  under 
the  flag  flying  above  me  now.  Who  would 
encumber  himself  with  finite  poetry  or  romance 
when  he  may  take  with  him  the  uncombined 
vocabulary,  with  its  infinite  possibilities  of 
affinities,  and  the  history  of  the  countries  and 
the  peoples  that  lie  beneath  this  flag,  and  bear 
in  his  heart  the  astounding  and  exalting 
consciousness — Civis  Eomanus  sum  ! 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY. 

SOME  little  while  ago  the  battered  and 
shattered  remains  of  an  old  bookcase  with 
the  sedimentary  deposit  of  my  own  books, 
reached  me  after  a  journey  of  many  hundred 
miles  from  its  former  resting  place.  The 
front  of  the  bookcase  is  twisted  wirework, 
which,  when  I  remember  it  first,  was  lined 
with  pink  silk.  Not  a  vestige,  not  a  shred 
of  the  silk  remains  and  the  half  dozen 
shelves  now  depend  for  preservation  in  posi- 
tion on  a  frame  as  crazy  as  Her  Majesty's 
ship  Victory,  and  certainly  older.  The  book- 
case had  belonged  to  my  grandfather  before 
Trafalgar,  and  some  of  the  books  I  found  in 
it  among  the  sediment  were  printed  before 
the  Great  Fire  of  London.  In  all  there  were 
about  a  couple  or  three  hundred  books,  none 


5G  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

of  which  would  be  highly  valued  by  a  biblio- 
phile. Owing  to  my  being  in  a  very  modest 
way  a  wanderer  on  the  face  of  the  realm,  these 
books  had  been  out  of  my  possession  for  nearly 
twenty  years,  and  dusty  and  dilapidated  as  they 
were  when  they  reached  me  I  took  them  in  my 
arms  as  long-lost  friends.  I  had  finished  the 
last  sentence  with  the  word  children,  but 
that  would  not  do  for  two  reasons.  These 
books  were  not  mine  as  this  one  I  am  now 
writing  is,  and  long-lost  children  change  more 
than  they  have  changed,  or  more  than  friends 
change.  Children  grow  and  outpace  us  and 
leave  us  behind  and  are  not  so  full  of  com- 
panionable memories  as  friends.  There  is 
hardly  time  to  make  friends  of  our  adult 
children  before  we  are  beckoned  away.  The 
friends  we  make  and  keep  when  we  are  young 
have  always  twenty  years'  start  of  our  children 
in  friendship.  A  man  may  be  friendly  with  his 
son  of  five  but  a  father  and  son  cannot  be 
full  friends  until  the  son  is  twenty  years  older. 

Again,   as  to   the   impropriety    of  speaking 
of   the    books   as   lon^-lost    children    I   have 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         57 

another  scruple.  I  am  in  great  doubt  as 
to  whether  the  recovery  of  a  long-lost  child  is 
at  all  desirable.  A  long-lost  child  means  a 
young  girl  or  boy  of  our  own  who  is  lost 
when  under  ten  years  of  age  and  recovered 
years  afterwards.  I  do  not  know  that  the 
recovery  of  the  missing  one  is  a  cause  of 
gratitude.  Remember  it  is  not  at  all  the 
child  we  lost.  It  is  a  child  alleged  or  alleging 
itself  to  be  the  child  we  lost.  It  is  more  correctly 
not  a  child  at  all,  but  a  lad  or  lass  whom  we 
knew  when  young,  and  whose  acquaintance  we 
have  to  make  over  again.  Our  personality 
has  become  dim  to  it,  and  we  have  to  occupy 
ourselves  seriously  in  trying  to  identify  the 
unwieldy  bulk  of  the  stranger  with  our  memory 
of  the  wanderer.  When  the  boy  went  from 
us  we  mourned  for  him  as  dead,  and  now  he 
comes  back  to  us  from  the  tomb  altered  all  out 
of  memory.  He  is  not  wholly  our  child.  There 
is  an  interregnum  in  our  reign  over  him  and  we 
do  not  know  what  manner  of  king  has  held 
sway  in  our  stead,  or,  if  knowing  the  usurper, 
we  cannot  measure  the  extent  or  force  of  his 


58  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

influence.  How  much  of  this  young  person  is 
really  our  very  own  ?  how  much  the  development 
of  untoward  fate  ?  Is  the  memory  of  our  lost 
one  dearer  than  the  presence  of  this  lad  who 
is  half  stranger  ?  What  we  lost  and  mourned 
was  ours  surely;  how  much  of  what  we  have 
regained  belongs  to  us  ? 

With  books  no  such  question  arises.  They 
are  our  very  own.  They  have  suffered  no 
increment,  but  rather  loss.  What  we  remember 
of  them  and  find  again  in  them  fills  us  with 
joy ;  what  we  have  forgotten  and  recall  excites 
a  surprise  which  makes  us  feel  rich.  We 
reproach  ourselves  with  not  having  loved  them 
sufficiently  well,  and  swear  upon  them  to 
endow  them  with  warmer  affection  henceforth. 
In  turning  over  the  books  in  the  old  case  I 
lighted  upon  one  which  I  believe  to  be  the 
volume  that  came  earliest  into  my  possession. 
It  is  Cobbett's  Spelling-Book^  and  by  the  writing 
on  the  title  page  I  see  it  was  given  to  me  by 
my  father  on  the  second  of  February,  1854. 
It  is  in  a  very  battered  and  tattered  condition. 
I  find  a  youthful  autograph  of  my  own  on  the 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGOHY.         59 

fly-leaf,  the  Christian  name  occupying  one  line, 
the  surname  the  second  ;  on  a  third  line  is  the 
name  of  the  town,  and  on  a  fourth  the  number  of 
the  street  and  part  of  the  name  of  the  street, 
the  last  being,  I  blush  to  say,  ill-spelt.  Surely 
there  never  was  a  book  hated  as  I  hated  this 
one !  At  that  time  I  had  declared  my  un- 
alterable determination  of  never  learning  to 
read.  I  possessed,  until  recently,  a  copy  of  Valpy's 
Latin  Grammar  of  about  the  same  date,  and  I 
remember  I  worshipped  the  Latin  Grammar 
compared  with  the  Spelling-Book.  I  knew  rosa 
before  I  could  read  \vords  of  two  syllables,  and 
at  this  moment  I  do  not  know  much  more 
Latin  than  I  did  then.  The  Spelling  Book  was 
published  by  Anne  Cobbett,  at  137,  Strand, 
in  1849.  It  is  almost  incredible  that  so  short 
a  time  ago  the  atrocious  woodcuts  could  be  got 
in  England  for  love  or  money.  There  is  no 
attempt  whatever  at  overlaying  in  the  print- 
ing; the  cut  pages  are  all  what  are  called 
"flat  pulls."  Here  and  there  through  the 
pages  of  chilling  columns  of  words  of  one,  two, 
three  or  more  syllables  are  pencil  marks 


CO  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

indicating  the  limits  of  a  day's  lesson.  What 
a  ruthless  way  they  had  with  us  children  in 
those  days !  When  I  look  at  those  appalling 
columns  of  arid  words  I  applaud  my  childish 
determination  of  never  learning  to  read  if 
the  art  were  to  be  acquired  only  by  tra- 
versing those  fearful  deserts  of  unintelligible 
verbiage.  Fancy  a  child  of  tender  years  con- 
fronted with  antitrinitarian,  consubstantiality, 
discontinuation,  excommunication,  extraordinari- 
ly, immateriality,  impenetrability,  indivisibility, 
naturalization,  plenipotentiary,  recapitulation, 
supererogation,  transubstantiation,  valetudin- 
arian, and  volatilization,  not  one  of  which  is  as 
difficult  to  spell  as  one  quarter  the  words  of  one 
syllable,  and  not  one  of  which  could  be  under- 
stood by  a  child  or  would  be  used  by  a  single  man 
out  of  a  thousand  in  all  his  life.  The  country 
had  penal  settlements  then,  why  in  the  name  of 
mercy  did  they  not  send  children  to  the 
settlements  and  give  them  a  chance  to  keep 
their  reason  and  become  useful  citizens  when 
their  time  of  punishment  had  expired  ?  I  am 
happy  to  say  I  find  no  pencil  marks  among 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         61 

those  leviathan  words  above.  I  suppose  I  never 
got  into  the  deep  waters  where  they  "  wallowing, 
unwieldy,  enormous  in  their  gait  tempest  the 
ocean." 

I  wonder  was  the  foundation  of  a  lifelong 
dislike  to  Cobbetfc's  writings  laid  in  me  at  that 
early  time  of  my  existence  ?  Anyway  I  do  not 
remember  the  day  when  I  did  not  dislike 
everything  I  read  of  Cobbett's,  and  I  dislike 
everything  of  his  I  read  now.  I  wonder,  also, 
was  it  at  that  early  date  the  seed  of  my  hatred 
of  fable  or  allegory  was  sown  ?  To  me  the  fables 
in  the  back  of  that  Spelling-Book  were  always 
odious,  now  they  are  loathsome.  With  the  cold- 
blooded "morals"  attendant  upon  them  they 
are  the  worst  foim  of  literary  torture  I  know. 
I  am  aware  that  the  bulk  of  them  are  not 
original,  but  Cobbett  inserted  them  in  his  book, 
and  I  give  him  full  credit  for  evil  intention. 
Yet  in  later  years  it  was  not  his  taste  for  fable 
that  repelled  me  but  his  intense  cornbativeness. 
He  is  never  comfortable  unless  he  is  mangling 
some  one.  It  was  a  pity  he  ever  left  the  army. 
He  would  have  been  a  credit  to  his  corps  at 
close  quarters  with  a  clubbed  musket.  Even  in 


IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 


the  Spelling-Book,  intended  for  young  children, 
his  "  Stepping-Stone  to  Cobbett's  English  Gram- 
mar" takes  the  form  of  a  dialogue,  in  which  he, 
the  "  Teacher,"  smashes  the  unfortunate  Scholar 
and  Mr.  William.  Cobbett  sprang  from  the 
people  and  was  a  Saxon,  pure  and  simple,  and 
the  Saxon  is  the  element  in  the  English  people 
which  has  been  most  undistinguished  when  un- 
mingled  with  other  blood.  The  Saxon  of  fifteen 
hundred  years  ago  is  the  yokel  of  to-day,  and 
he  never  was  more  than  a  yokel  intellectually. 
The  enormous  intellectual  fertility  of  England 
is  owing  to  successive  invasions,  and  chiefly  to 
the  Norman  Conquest.  All  the  great  and  noble 
and  sweet  faces  in  English  history  are  Norman, 
or  largely  Norman.  The  awful  faces  of  the 
Gibbon  type  make  periods  of  English  history 
like  a  night  spectral  with  evil  dreams. 

Does  any  one  past  the  condition  of  childhood 
really  like  fables  ?  Mind,  I  do  not  say  past  the 
years  of  childhood.  But  does  any  one  of  fully 
mature  intellect  like  fables  or  pleasantly  endure 
allegories  ?  I  think  not.  In  the  vigour  of  all 
lives  there  must  be  lacunce  of  intense  indolence, 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         63 

backwaters  of  the  mind,  where  one  is  willing  to 
float  effortless  and  take  the  things  that  come  as 
though  they  were  good  things  rather  than 
work  at  the  oars  in  pursuit  of  novelties.  At 
such  times  it  is  easier  to  persuade  ourselves  we 
are  amused  by  books  that  we  admired  when  we 
lacked  experience  and  discernment  than  to 
break  new  ground  and  encounter  fresh  obstacles. 
I  am  leaving  out  of  account  the  dull  worthy 
people  who  say  they  like  a  book  because  other 
people  say  they  like  it.  These  good  people  live  in 
a  continual  state  of  self-justification.  They  are 
much  more  serenely  secure  in  what  they  im- 
agine to  be  their  opinions  than  those  travailing 
souls  that  really  have  opinions  of  their  own. 
Their  life  is  easy,  and  in  lazy  moments  one 
sighs  for  the  repose  they  enjoy.  But  do  not  the 
people  with  active  minds  often  adhere  to  child- 
ish likings  merely  from  indolence  ?  A  certain 
question  they  settled  in  their  own  minds  when 
they  were  ten ;  it  is  too  much  trouble  to  treat 
it  as  an  open  matter  at  thirty.  Consistency  in  a 
politician  is  invariably  a  sign  of  stupidity, 
because  no  man  (outside  fundamental  questions 


64  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

of  morals)  can  with  credit  to  his  sense  re- 
main stationary  in  opinion  for  thirty  years 
where  all  is  change.  The  very  data  on 
which  he  based  an  opinion  in  the  year 
one  are  vapourized  in  the  year  thirty.  The 
foundation  of  all  political  theories  is  first 
principles  of  some  kind,  and  the  only  support 
a  philosophic  mind  rejects  with  disdain  is  a 
first  principle  of  any  kind.  Now,  the  fables 
we  tolerate,  nay,  admire  as  children,  are  in  ima- 
ginative literature  what  first  principles  are  in 
that  branch  of  imaginary  philanthropy  called 
politics.  It  is  much  easier  to  say  every  man 
has  a  right  to  eight  shillings  a  day  than  to  find 
out  what  each  particular  man  has  a  right  to,  or 
if  man  has  a  right  to  anything  at  all.  It  is 
much  easier  to  say  one  does  like  Fontaine 
than  at  thirty  years  of  age  to  acquire  a  disgust 
of  him  and  his  fables. 

The  lying  insincerity  of  fables  and  their 
morals  always  shocks  me,  and  the  gross  blind- 
ness of  the  fabulist  to  any  view  of  transactions 
but  that  adopted  by  him  to  point  his  precept, 
me  with  contempt  for  him  as  an  artist. 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         65 

In  the  Spelling-Book  I  do  not  feel  myself  at 
liberty  to  select  the  fables  as  I  choose.  I  will 
take  only  one,  the  first  that  comes.  It  is  about 
the  swallow  and  the  sparrow.  It  is  a  very  bad 
specimen  for  my  contention,  but  as  I  am  the 
challenger  I  have  not  the  choice  of  weapons, 
and  I  accept  the  first  presented  by  Cobbett. 

A  swallow  coming  back  to  her  old  nest  in  the 
spring  finds  it  occupied  by  a  sparrow  and  his 
brood  of  young  ones.  The  swallow  demands 
possession  on  the  grounds  of  having  built  the 
nest  and  brought  up  three  broods  in  it.  The 
sparrow  will  not  budge.  The  swallow  sum- 
mons a  number  of  swallows,  and  they  wall  up 
the  sparrow  and  he  and  his  brood  die  of  hunger. 
The  first  notice  of  bias  the  reader  gets  is  that 
the  swallow  is  called  she,  and  the  sparrow  he. 
Why  ?  For  the  dishonest  purpose  of  enlisting 
sympathy  with  the  swallow.  There  is  no 
evidence  or  statement  the  sparrow  was  aware 
when  taking  possession  of  the  nest  that  it 
would  be  reclaimed  by  the  swallow.  How  was 
the  sparrow  to  know  that  the  swallow  was  not 
dead  and  buried  by  the  mole  ?  The  nest  was 


66  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

derelict.     Again,  when   the  swallow  returned 
the  sparrow  had  young  ones,  which  it  would 
be  dangerous  to  remove  from  the  nest.     How 
was    the    sparrow   to   know   the   swallow  was 
telling    the    truth,   and    that    the     nest    was 
hers  ?       Then,   even    supposing    the    sparrow 
to    be    all    in    the    wrong,    the    punishment 
was    out    of    all    proportion   to    the    offence. 
The    sparrow    had    done     no     harm    beyond 
intruding.       He   had   not   injured  the   furni- 
ture, or   burned  any  of  the   swallow's  gas,  or 
broken    into    the   wine-cellar.      Justice  would 
have  been  vindicated  by  the  expulsion  of  the 
intruder  and  his  brood.      But  what  takes  place 
instead  ?    The  door  is  built  up,  and  the  sparrow 
with  his  innocent  young  is  murdered  !     Surely 
if  this  is  a  fruitful  fable,  the  moral  is  immoral. 
This  is  the   old   Mosaic   theory  of  an  eye  for 
an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,  and  a  little, 
or  rather  a  great  deal  more.      It  is  hideously 
un-Christian.       I    believe    Cobbett    professed 
Christianity.      Why  did    he    put    this    odious 
vengeful  story  in  the  forefront  of  his  exemplars 
of  righteous  doing  ? 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         67 

But  the  worst  part  of  the  story  is  in  the 
Moral.  "Thus  it  always  is  with  the  unjust," 
says  the  Chorus  of  the  fabulist.  He  means  that 
the  unjust  are  always  nailed  up  in  their  houses 
with  their  blameless  children  and  starved  to 
death.  Now  neither  Cobbett  nor  any  other  sane 
preacher  believes  anything  of  the  kind.  This  is 
a  lie,  pure  and  simple ;  a  lie  no  doubt  told  with  a 
good  object,  but  a  lie  all  the  same.  Cobbett 
had  too  much  common-sense  not  to  know  that 
it  is  not  always  "  thus  "  with  the  "  unjust."  As 
a  rule,  the  unjust  go  scot  free  when  they  stop 
short  of  crime.  The  people  who  say  otherwise 
are  yielding  to  a  feminine,  sentimental  weak- 
ness. Poetic  justice  no  doubt  does  exist — in 
poetry.  Most  men  are  as  unjust  as  they  dare 
be,  and  most  men  get  on  comfortably  from  their 
cradles  to  their  graves.  It  is  only  the  fools,  the 
men  of  ungovernable  passions  and  impulses  and 
the  blunderers  who  suffer.  Man  is  at  heart 
a  rapacious  brute.  All  his  centuries  of  civiliza- 
tion have  not  quelled  the  predatory  spirit  in  him. 
Any  man  will  become  a  thief  if  he  only  be 
sufficiently  tempted  when  he  is  sufficiently 


68  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

desperate.  The  crime  of  the  sparrow  in 
appropriating  the  swallow's  nest  is  intelligible, 
the  crime  of  the  swallow  in  murdering  the 
sparrow  and  his  brood  is  intelligible,  the 
crime  of  lying  committed  by  the  moralist  is 
abominable.  When  the  child  to  whom 
Cobbett  lied  grows  up,  he  will  know  the  lie, 
despise  the  liar,  and  have  nothing  left  of  the 
precious  fable  but  a  shaken  faith  in  the  words 
of  all  men,  whether  they  be  liars  like  Cobbett 
and  the  other  moralists,  or  truth-tellers  like  the 
ordinary  everyday  folk,  who  do  not  pose  as 
teachers  and  latter-day  prophets.  It  is  very 
improving  to  reflect  on  the  freedom  these 
teachers  give  themselves  in  act  when  enforcing 
their  theories  in  writing.  In  order  that  Cobbett 
might  exemplify  his  principles  against  the 
credit  system,  he  signed  his  name  across  the 
face  of  acceptances  for  seventy  thousand 
pounds ! 

Gobbet t's  Grammar  was  written  for  sailors 
and  soldiers  and  such  men.  I  gave  the  only  copy 
of  it  I  ever  had  to  a  sailor  who  had  abandoned 
living  on  the  sea  to  live  by  the  sea,  who  had 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         60 

eschewed  the  paint-pot  and  the  stage  aboard 
the  merchant  service  for  the  palette  and  stool 
of  the  studio.  It  is  years  since  I  have  seen 
the  book,  but  I  remember  the  contemptuous 
way  in  which  the  ex-soldier  disposes  of  prosody. 
He  says  to  his  pupil  in  effect :  You  need  pay  no 
attention  to  this  branch  of  grammar,  as  it  deals 
only  with  the  noise  made  by  words.  Cobbett's 
treatment  of  prosody  does  not  occupy  more  than 
one  line  or  one  line  and  a  half  of  print.  It  is 
briefer  than  Dr.  Johnson's  Syntax  : 

"The  established  practice  of  grammarians  requires 
that  I  should  here  treat  of  the  Syntax  ;  but  our  language 
has  so  little  inflexion,  or  variety  of  terminations,  that 
its  construction  neither  requires  nor  admits  many  rules. 
Wallis,  therefore,  has  totally  neglected  it ;  and  Jonson, 
whose  desire  of  following  the  writers  upon  the  learned 
languages  made  him  think  a  syntax  indispensably 
necessary,  has  published  such  petty  observations  as 
were  better  omitted. 

"The  verb,  as  in  other  languages,  agrees  with  the 
nominative  in  number  and  person  ;  as  Thou  fliest  from 
good ;  He  runs  to  death. 

"  Our  adjectives  are  invariable. 

"Of  two  substantives  the  noun  possessive  is  the 
genitive  ;  as  His  father's  glory;  the  sun's  heat. 


70  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

"  Verbs  transitive  require  an  oblique  case ;  as  He 
loves  me  ;  You  fear  him. 

"  All  prepositions  require  an  oblique  case  :  He  gave 
this  to  me ;  He  tooJc  this  from  me  /  He  says  this  of  me ; 
He  came  with  me." 

That  is  all  the  merciful  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson 
has  to  say  about  syntax.  Oh,  Lindley  Murray ! 
Oh,  memories  of  youth  !  Does  it  seem  possible 
that  Johnson  could  have  enjoyed  the  luxury 
of  speaking  in  this  light  and  airy  and  debonair 
way  of  English  grammar  in  his  day,  and  that 
Lindley  Murray  could  have  matured  his  awful 
Grammar  in  so  few  years  afterwards  ?  Recollect 
there  were  not  forty  years  between  the  lexico- 
grapher and  the  grammarian.  Could  not  Lindley 
Murray  have  left  the  unfortunate  English  lan- 
guage alone  ?  Johnson  says  no  one  need  bother 
about  syntax,  and  Cobbett  says  no  one  need 
bother  about  prosody.  Thus  we  have  only 
orthography  and  etymology  to  look  after,  when 
in  comes  Murray  and  spoils  all !  It  is  doubtful 
if  the  language  will  ever  recover  the  interference 
of  that  Yankee  merchant  who  invented  syntax 
and  made  the  life  of  dull  school  boys  and  girls  a 
path  of  thorns  and  agony. 


f 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         71 

An  allegory  is  a  fable  for  fools  of  larger  growth. 
I  am  writing  in  an  off-hand  way,  and  I  will  not 
pause  to  examine  the  question  nicely ;  but  is 
there  any  such  thing  as  a  successful  allegory  ? 
I  have  no  experience  of  one.  I  seem  to  hear  a 
loud  shout  of  "  The  Pilgrim9 s Progress"  Well,  I 
never  could  read  the  book  through,  and  I  have 
tried  at  least  twenty  times.  I  have  put  the  read- 
ing of  that  book  before  myself  in  the  most  solemn 
manner.  I  have  told  myself  over  and  over  again 
that  I  ought  to  read  it  as  an  educational  exercise. 
In  vain.  How  any  man  with  imagination  can 
bear  the  book  I  do  not  know.  Bunyan  had  in- 
exhaustible invention,  but  no  imagination.  He 
saw  a  reason  for  things,  not  the  things  them- 
selves. No  creation  of  the  imagination  can 
lack  consequence  or  verisimilitude.  On  almost 
every  page  of  the  Progress  there  is  violation 
of  sequence,  outrage  against  verisimilitude 
Christian  has  a  great  burden  on  his  back  and  is 
in  rags.  He  cannot  remove  the  burden.  (Why  ?) 
He  is  put  to  bed  (with  the  burden  on  his  back), 
then  he  is  troubled  in  his  mind  (the  burden  is 
forgotten,  and  the  vision  altered  completely  and 


72  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

fatally) ;  again  we  are  reminded  that  lie  has  the 
burden  on  his  back  when  he  tells  Evangelist  of 
it.  Why  can  he  not  loose  the  burden  on  his 
back?  How  is  it  secured  so  that  he  cannot 
remove  it  ?  He  cannot  see  a  wicket  gate 
across  a  very  wide  field,  but  he  sees  a  shining 
light  (where  ?),  and  then  he  begins  to  run  (bur- 
den and  all)  away  from  his  wife  and  children 
(which  is  immoral  and  abhorrent  to  the  laws  of 
God  and  man).  For  the  mere  selfish  ease  of  his 
body  he  deserts  his  wife  and  children,  who  must 
be  left  miserably  poor,  for  is  he  not  in  rags? 
The  neighbours  come  out  and  mock  at  him 
for  running  across  a  field.  Why?  How  do 
they  know  why  he  runs,  and  what  neighbours 
are  there  to  come  out  and  mock  at  one  when 
one  is  running  across  a  large  field  ?  The  Slough 
of  Despond  is  in  this  field  (for  he  has  not 
passed  through  the  wicket  gate),  and  he  does 
not  seem  to  know  of  the  Slough,  or  think  of 
avoiding  it.  Fancy  any  man  not  knowing  of 
such  a  filthy  hole  within  a  field  of  his  home ! 
How  is  it  that  Pliable  and  Obstinate  have  no 
burdens  on  their  backs  ?  It  is  not  the  will  of 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         73 

the  King  that  the  Slough  should  be  dangerous 
to  wayfarers :  this  surely  is  blasphemy.  The 
whole  thing  is  grotesquely  absurd  and  impos- 
sible to  imagine.  There  is  no  sobriety  in  it,  no 
sobriety  of  keeping  in  it;  and  no  matter  how 
wild  the  effort  or  vision  of  imagination  may  be 
there  must  always  be  sobriety  of  keeping  in  it 
or  it  is  delirium  not  imagination,  disease  not 
inspiration.  As  far  as  I  can  see  there  is  no 
trace  of  imagination,  or  even  fancy,  in  the  Pil- 
grim's Progress.  The  story  never  happened  at 
all.  It  is  a  horrible  attempt  to  tinkerise  the 
Bible. 

One  of  the  things  I  cannot  understand  about 
Macaulay  is  that  he  stands  by  Bunyan's  silly 
book.  Macaulay  was  a  man  of  vast  reading 
and  acquirements  and  of  common-sense  tastes. 
He  was  not  a  poet,  but  he  was  very  nearly 
one,  and  ought  to  have  responded  in  sympathy 
with  poets.  In  politics  he  belonged  to  that 
most  melancholy  of  all  sects,  the  Whigs,  and  it 
may  be  that  the  spirit  of  political  compromise 
to  which  he  had  familiarised  himself  in  public 
life  had  slipped  unknown  to  him  into  his  literary 


74  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

briefs.  Anyway,  he  himself  says  that  the  Pil- 
grims Progress  is  the  only  book  which  was  pro- 
moted from  the  kitchen  to  the  drawing-room. 
There  is  no  difficulty  in  accounting  for  the  fact 
that  the  book  was  popular  among  scullions  and 
cooks,  but  how  it  ever  gained  currency  among 
people  of  moderate  education  and  taste  can- 
not be  explained.  It  is  the  most  dull  and 
tedious  and  monstrous  book  of  any  note  in  the 
English  language,  and  how  any  man  with  a 
gleam  of  imagination  can  like  it  is  more  than  I 
can  understand.  If  one  has  been  familiar  with 
it  when  young,  one  may  tolerate  it  on  the  score 
of  tenderness — tenderness  for  memories  and 
laziness  in  new  enterprises ;  but  I  never  yet 
knew  any  one  with  even  fancy  who,  meeting  it 
for  the  first  time  after  the  dawn  of  adolescence, 
could  even  endure  it. 

It  is  like  celebrating  one's  own  apotheosis  to 
drop  Bunyan  and  take  up  Spenser.  Here  we 
share  the  air  with  an  immortal  god  and  not  a 
bilious  enthusiast.  When  I  have  laid  aside  the 
Spelling-Boole  and  the  Pilgrim's  Progress,  and 
opened  the  Faerie  Queen,  I  feel  as  though  the 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         75 

leaden  clouds  of  the  north  had  rolled  away, 
disclosing  the  blue  of  ^Egean  skies ;  as  though 
for  squalid  porridge  and  buttermilk  had  been 
substituted  ambrosia  and  nectar;  as  though 
for  fallow  and  stubble  had  drifted  under  my 
feet  soft  meadow-grass  dense  with  flowers;  as 
though  the  moist  and  clayey  crags  had  changed 
into  purple  hills,  the  green-mantled  pools  to 
azure  lakes,  the  narrow  waters  of  a  stagnant 
mere  to  the  free  imperial  waves  and  tides  of  the 
ocean.  It  is  better  than  escaping  out  of  an 
East-end  slum  into  the  green  lanes  and  roads 
of  Warwickshire. 

And  yet,  melancholy  truth  !  the  Faerie  Queen 
is  most  unpopular  and  most  unreadable.  It  has 
with  justice,  I  think,  been  said  that  of  ten 
thousand  people  who  begin  the  Faerie  Queen, 
not  ten  read  half  wray  through  it,  and  only  one 
arrives  at  the  end.  I  find  by  a  mark  in  my 
copy  that  I  have  got  a  good  deal  more  than 
half  through  it,  but  that  I  have  not  reached  the 
last  line  of  this  most  colossal  fragment  of  a 
poem.  What  a  mercy  the  rest  of  it  was  drowned 
in  the  Irish  sea!  My  Faerie  Queen  occupies 


76  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

792  pages  of  five  stanzas  to  the  page;  that 
is,  between  thirty-five  and  thirty-six  thousand 
verses,  two  hundred  and  sixty  to  seventy 
thousand  words,  or  equal  in  length  to  a  couple 
of  ordinary  three-volume  novels  !  And  still  it 
is  unperfite  !  I  find  that  although  I  have  owned 
the  book  for  twenty  years,  I  have  got  no  further 
than  page  472,  so  that  I  have  read  only  three- 
fifths  of  the  fragment  of  this  stupendous  poem. 

It  is  not  the  length  alone  that  defeats  the 
reader.  In  all  the  field  of  English  verse  there 
is  no  poem  of  great  length  that  conies  upon  the 
mind  with  more  full  and  easy  flow.  The  stanza 
after  a  long  while  becomes,  no  doubt,  mono- 
tonous, but  it  is  the  monotony  of  a  vast  and 
freightful  river  that  moves  majestically,  bear- 
ing interminable  argosies  of  infinite  beauty  and 
variety  and  significance.  After  one  hundred 
pages  one  might  put  down  the  book,  wearied 
by  the  melodious  monotony  of  the  imperial 
chords.  I  have  never  been  able  to  read  any- 
thing like  a  hundred,  anything  like  fifty  pages 
at  a  time.  I  think  I  have  rarely  exceeded  as 
many  stanzas.  Spenser  is  the  poets'  poet,  and  I 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         77 

the  Faerie  Queen  the  poets'  poem,  and  yet  even 
the  poets  cannot  read  it  freely  and  fully,  as  one 
reads  Milton  or  Shakespeare  or  Shelley  or  Keats 
or  the  readable  parts  of  Coleridge,  all  of  whom 
are  poets'  poets  also. 

The  allegory  bars  the  way.  One  reads  on 
smoothly  and  joyously  about  a  wood  or  a  nymph, 
or  a  knight  or  a  lady,  or  a  castle  or  a  dragon, 
and  is  half  drunk  on  the  wealthy  poet's  mead 
(is  not  Spenser  the  wealthiest  of  English 
poets?),  when  suddenly  Dan  Allegory  comes 
along  and  assures  you  that  it  is  not  a  wood  or  a 
nymph,  or  a  knight  or  lady,  or  a  castle  or  dragon, 
but  a  virtue  or  a  vice  posing  in  property  clothes ; 
that  in  fact  things  are  not  what  they  seem,  but 
visions  are  about.  Cobbett  intended  his  fables 
for  little  children,  and  Bunyan  his  allegory  for 
the  company  of  the  stewpans,  but  Spenser's 
story  is  for  the  ears  of  ladies  and  of  knights; 
why  then  does  he  try  to  spoon-feed  them  with 
virtuous  sentiment  ?  There  is  not,  as  far  as  I 
know,  a  trace  of  dyspepsia  in  all  the  Faerie 
Queen,  and  yet  he  has  sicklied  it  over  "  with  the 

pale  cast  of  thought."     In  this  Vale  of  Tears 
G 


78  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

there  are  quite  as  many  virtuous  persons  as  any 
reasonable  man  can  desire.  Why  should  our 
poets — those  rare  and  exquisite  manifestations 
of  our  possibilities — turn  themselves  into  moral- 
ists, who  are,  bless  you,  as  common  as  grocers, 
as  plentiful  as  mediocrity.  In  fact,  nine- tenths 
of  the  civilised  race  of  man  are  moralists.  But 
poets  ought  not  to  be  theorists.  They  are 
not  sent  to  us  for  the  purpose  of  converting  us, 
but  for  the  purpose  of  delighting  us.  They 
ought  to  be  catholic  and  pagan.  They  are 
among  the  settled  property  of  joy  to  which  all 
mankind  are  heirs.  They  come  in  among  the 
flowers  and  colours  of  the  sky  and  earth,  and 
the  vocal  rapture  of  the  birds,  and  the  perfumes 
of  the  breeze,  and  the  love  of  woman  and  chil- 
dren and  friends  and  kind.  They  are  sent  to  us 
for  our  mere  delight.  They  never  grow  less  or 
fade  away  or  change.  They  have  nothing  to  do 
with  dynasties  or  creeds  or  codes  of  manners. 
They  are  apart  from  all  bias  and  strife.  The 
will  of  Heaven  itself  is  against  poets  preaching, 
for  no  poet  has  ever  written  hymns  that  were 
not  a  burden  upon  his  reputation  as  a  singer, 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         79 

and  did  not  weigh  him  to  the  ground,  com- 
pared with  his  flight  when  free  and  catholic 
and  pagan. 

After  entertaining  the  nightmares  of  dulness 
born  of  Cobhett  and  Bunyan,  how  one's  shoulders 
swing  back,  one's  chest  opens,  and  one's  breath 
comes  with  large  and  ample  coolness  and  joy 
as  one  reads — 

"  The  ioyous  day  gan  early  to  appeare ; 
And  fayre  Aurora  from  the  deawy  bed 
Of  aged  Tithone  gan  herselfe  to  reare 
With  rosy  cheekes,  for  shame  as  blushing  red: 
Her  golden  locks,  for  hast,  were  loosely  shed 
About  her  eares,  when  Una  her  did  marke 
Clymbe  to  her  charet,  all  with  flowers  spred, 
From  heven  high  to  chace  the  chearelesse  darke; 
With  mery  note  her  lowd  salutes  the  mountain  larke." 

Or  again  here — 

"Then  forth  he  called  that  his  daughter  fayre, 
The  fairest  Un',  his  onely  daughter  deare, 
His  onely  daughter  and  his  onely  hayre ; 
Who  forth  proceeding  with  sad  sober  cheare, 
As  bright  as  doth  the  morning  starre  appeare 
Out  of  the  east  with  flaming  lockes  bedight, 
To  tell  that  dawning  day  is  drawing  neare 
And  to  the  world  does  bring  long  wished  light : 
So  fair  and  fresh  that  lady  ehewd  herselfe  in  sight.'1 


80  IGNOEANT  ESSAYS. 

Is  it  not  a  miserable  destiny  to  be  obliged  to 
read  stanza  after  stanza  redolent  of  such  rich 
perfumed  words  about  the  lady,  and  then  to 
find  that  Una  is  not  a  mortal  or  a  spirit  even — 
but  Truth  !  An  abstraction  !  A  whim  of  de- 
grading reason !  A  figment  of  a  moralist's 
heated  and  disordered  brain.  Any  Lie  of  a  poet 
is  better  than  any  Truth  of  a  moralist.  Why 
did  Spenser  stoop  to  run  on  the  same  intellectual 
plain  as  the  accidental  teacher?  The  teacher 
would  have  done  admirably  for  Truth,  but  all 
the  worthy  essayists  of  England  in  the  "  spacious 
days  of  Queen  Elizabeth,"  put  together,  could 
not  have  written  the  stanzas  about  Una  as 
Spenser  saw  her.  This  poaching  of  poets  on 
the  preserves  of  moralists  is  one  of  the  most 
shameful  things  in  the  history  of  art. 

There  are  few  poets  it  is  harder  to  select 
quotations  from  than  Spenser.  The  fact  is,  all 
the  Faerie  Queen  ought  to  be  quoted  except 
the  blinding  allegory.  I  find  that  in  years  of 
my  movement  from  the  opening  of  the  poem 
to  page  472,  the  limit  I  have  reached,  I  have 
marked  a  hundred  passages  at  least,  some 


LIES  OF  FABLE  AND  ALLEGORY.         81 

of  them  running  through  pages.  In  no  other 
poem — except  Shelley's  Alastor — do  I  notice  sue  a 
grievous,  continuous  pencil  scores.  What  is  one 
to  do  ?  Whither  is  one  to  turn  ?  As  I  handle 
the  book  I  am  lost  in  a  deeper  forest  of  delight 
than  ever  knight  of  Gloriana's  trod.  Here  I 
find  a  passage  of  several  stanzas  marked.  I  am 
much  too  lazy  to  copy  them,  and  the  spelling  is 
troublesome  often.  But  who  can  resist  this  ? — 

" And,  when  she  spake, 

Sweete  wordes,  like  dropping  honny,  she  did  shed, 

And  twixt  the  perles  and  rubins  softly  brake 

A  silver  sound,  that  heavenly  musicke  seemed  to  make. 


Upon  her  eyelids  many  graces  sate 
Under  the  shadow  of  her  even  browes." 

I  have  quoted  the  three  lines  and  a  half  of 
the  earlier  stanza  merely  that  they  may  act  as 
an  overture  to  the  last  two  lines.  Surely  there 
are  no  two  lovelier  lines  in  the  language  !  In 
the  last  line  the  words  seem  to  melt  together 
of  their  own  propinquity. 

Here  is  an  alexandrine  that  haunts  me  night 
and  day — 
"Sweete  is  the  love  that  comes  alone  with  willingnesse.'1 


82  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

As  a  rule,  I  hate  writing  with  the  books  I 
am  speaking  of  near  me ;  they  fetter  one  cruelly 
when  they  are  at  hand.    There  is  a  tendency  to 
verify  one's  memory,  and  read  up  the  context 
of  favourite   lines.     This    is   checking   to  the 
speed  and  chilling  to  the  spirits.     When  I  was 
saying  something  about  the  Spelling-Book  and 
the  Pilgrim's  Progress,  I  had  the  copies  within 
arm's  length,  for  I  did  not  know  either  well 
enough  to  trust  to  memory.     Since  I  got  done 
with  them  I  have  placed  them  in  distant  safety. 
But  one  likes  to  handle  Spenser — to  have  it 
nigh.     My  copy  is  lying  at  my  left  elbow  in  the 
blazing  sun  as  I  write  now.     It  seems  to  me 
I  shall  never  again  look  into  the  Spelling-Book 
or  the  Pilgrim's  Progress.      Fables  and   alle- 
gories   are    only    foolishnesses    fit   for   people 
of  weak  intellect  and  children.     Well,  when  I 
put  down  this  pen,  and  before  this  ink  is  dry,  I 
shall  have  resumed  my  interrupted  reading  of 
the  Faerie  Queen  at  page  473.     My  intellect  is 
too  weak  and  my  heart  too  childish  to  resist  the 
seduction  of  Spenser's  verse.     So  much  for  my 
own  theory  of  allegory  and  my  respect  for  my 
own  theory. 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS. 

THE  only  copy  of  Keats  I  ever  owned  is  a 
modest  volume  published  by  Edward  Moxon  and 
Co.  in  the  year  1861.  By  writing  on  its  yellow 
fly-leaf  I  find  it  was  given  to  me  four  years  later, 
in  September  1865.  At  that  time  it  was  clean 
and  bright,  opened  with  strict  impartiality  when 
set  upon  its  back,  and  had  not  learned  to  respond 
with  alacrity  to  hasty  searches  for  favourite 
passages. 

The  binding  is  now  racked  and  feeble  from 
use ;  and  if,  as  in  army  regulations,  service 
under  warm  suns  is  to  be  taken  for  longer 
service  in  cooler  climes,  it  may  be  said  that  to 
the  exhaustion  following  overwork  have  been 
added  the  prejudices  of  premature  age. 

It  is  not  bound  as  books  were  bound  once  upon 
a  time,  when  they  outlasted  the  tables  and  chairs, 


84  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

even  the  walls ;  ay,  the  very  races  and  names  of 
their  owners.  The  cover  is  simple  plain  blue 
cloth ;  on  the  back  is  a  little  patch  of  printing 
in  gold,  with  the  words  Keats's  Poetical  Works 
in  the  centre  of  a  twined  gilt  ribbon  and  twisted 
gilt  flowers.  The  welt  at  the  back  is  bleached 
and  frayed ;  the  corners  of  the  cover  are  battered 
and  turned  in.  There  is  a  chink  between  the 
cover  and  the  arched  back ;  and  the  once  proud 
Norman  line  of  that  arc  is  flattened  and 
degraded,  retaining  no  more  of  its  pristine  look 
of  sturdy  strength  than  a  wheaten  straw  after 
the  threshing. 

In  a  list  of  new  books  preceding  the 
biography  of  the  poet  I  find  the  volume  I  speak 
of  under  the  head  "  POETRY — Pocket  Editions;" 
described  as  "  Keats's  Poetical  Works.  With  a 
Memoir  by  R.  M.  Milnes.  Price  85.  6d.  cloth." 
It  was  from  no  desire  to  look  my  gift-horse  in 
the  mouth  I  alighted  upon  the  penultimate  fact 
disclosed  in  the  description.  When  I  become 
owner  of  any  volume  my  first  delight  in  it  is  to 
read  the  catalogue  of  new  books  annexed,  if 
there  be  any,  before  breaking  my  fast  upon  the 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  85 


subject-matter  of  the  writer  in  my  hand — as  a 
poor  gentleman  in  a  spacious  restaurant,  who, 
having  ordered  luncheon,  consisting  of  bread 
and  cheese,  butter,  and  a  half-pint  of  bitter  ale, 
takes  up  the  bill  of  fare  and  the  list  of  wines, 
and  designs  for  his  imagination  a  feast  his 
purse  denies  to  his  lips. 

If  any  owner  of  a  cart  of  old  books  in 
Farringdon  Street  asked  you  a  shilling  for  such  a 
copy  of  Keats  as  mine,  you  would  smile  at  him. 
You  would  think  he  had  acquired  the  books 
merely  to  satisfy  his  own  taste,  and  now 
displayed  them  to  gratify  a  vanity  that  was 
intelligible  ;  you  would  feel  assured  no  motive 
towards  commerce  could  underlie  ever  so  deeply 
such  a  preposterous  demand. 

My  copy  will,  I  think,  last  my  time.  Already 
it  has  been  in  my  hands  more  than  half  the 
years  of  a  generation  ;  and  I  feel  that  its  severest 
trials  are  over.  In  days  gone  by  it  made  journeys 
with  me  by  sea  and  land,  and  paid  long  visits 
to  some  friends,  both  when  I  went  myself,  and 
when  I  did  not  go.  Change  of  air  and  scene  have 
had  no  beneficial  effect  upon  it.  Journey  after 


86  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

journey,  and  visit  r.fter  visit,  the  full  cobalt  of 
the  cloth  grew  darker  and  dingier,  the  boards  of 
the  cover  became  limper  and  limper,  and  the 
stitching  at  the  back  more  apparent  between 
the  sheets,  like  the  bones  and  sinews  growing 
outward  through  the  flesh  of  a  hand  waxing  old. 

Once,  when  the  book  had  been  on  a  prolonged 
excursion  away  from  me,  it  returned  sadly  out 
of  sorts.  Had  it  been  a  dear  friend  come  back 
from  India  on  sick-leave,  after  an  absence  from 
temperate  skies  of  twenty  years,  I  could  not 
have  observed  a  more  disquieting  change.  The 
cover  was  darkened  so  that  the  original  hue  had 
almost  wholly  disappeared,  save  at  the  edges, 
that,  like  the  Indian  veteran's  forehead,  were  of 
startling  and  unwholesome  pallor.  Its  presence 
in  such  guise  aroused  a  gnawing  solicitude  which 
undermined  all  peace.  I  could  not  endure  the 
symptoms  of  its  speedy  decline,  the  prospect  of 
its  dissolution ;  and  to  shield  its  case  from  harm 
and  my  sensibilities  from  continual  assault,  I 
wrapped  \t  with  sighs  and  travail  of  heart  in 
a  gritty  coyer  of  substantial  brown  paper. 

For  a  while,  the  consciousness  that  my  book 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  87 

was  safe  compensated  for  the  unfamiliarity  of  its 
appearance  and  my  constitutional  antipathy  to 
contact  with  brown  paper,  even  a  lively  image 
of  which  makes  me  cringe. 

But  as  days  went  on  the  brown  paper  entered 
into  my  soul  and  rankled.  What  1  was  my  Keats 
to  be  clad  in  that  wretched  union  garb,  that 
livery  of  poverty  acknowledged,  that  corduroy 
of  the  bookshelf  ?  Intolerable  1  Should  I,  who 
had,  like  other  men,  only  my  time  to  live,  be 
denied  all  friendly  sight  of  the  natural  seeming 
of  my  prime  friend  ?  My  Keats  would  last  my 
time ;  and  why  should  I  hide  my  friend  in  an 
un particularised  garb,  the  uniform  of  the  mean 
or  the  needy,  merely  that  those  who  came  after 
me  might  enjoy  a  privilege  of  which  sense- 
less timidity  sought  to  rob  me  ?  No ;  that 
should  not  be.  I  would  cast  away  the  badge  of 
beggary,  and,  like  a  man,  face  the  daily  decay  of 
my  old  companion.  I  tore  the  paper  off,  threw 
it  upon  the  fire,  and  set  my  disenthralled  Keats 
in  its  own  proper  vesture  on  the  shelf  among  its 
comrades  and  its  peers. 

There  is  no  man,  how  poor  soever,  who  has 


88  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

not  some  taste  which,  for  his  circumstances,  must 
be  regarded  as  expensive ;  and  in  that  "  sweet 
unreasonableness  "  of  human  nature,  not  at  all 
limited  to  "  the  Celt,"  men  take  a  kind  of  foolish 
pride  in  their  particular  extravagances.  You 
know  a  man  that  declares  he  would  sooner  go 
without  his  dinner  than  a  clean  shirt ;  another 
who  would  prefer  one  good  cigar  to  a  pound  of 
cavendish ;  one  who  would  rather  travel  to  the 
City  of  winter  mornings  by  train  without  an  over- 
coat than  by  vulgar  tramcar  in  fur  and  pilot  cloth  ; 
a  fourth  who  would  more  gladly  give  his  right 
hand  than  forget  his  Greek;  a  fifth  who  pays  the 
hire  of  a  piano  and  does  without  the  beer  which 
as  a  Briton  is  his  birthright ;  a  sixth  who  starves 
himself  and  stints  his  family  for  the  love  of  a 
garden.  For  my  own  part,  I  felt  the  using  of  my 
Keats  without  protection  of  any  kind  to  be  beyond 
my  means,  but  I  gloried  in  this  extravagance. 
It  seemed  rich  to  be  thus  hand  and  glove  with 
the  book :  to  touch  it  when  and  where  I  would, 
and  as  much  as  ever  I  liked :  to  feel  assured 
that  even  with  free  using  and  free  lending  it 
would  outlast  my  short  stay  here,  as  the  blossoms 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  89 

of  the  roses  in  a  friend's  hedge  outlast  your 
summer  visit.  Was  it  not  fine,  did  it  not  strike 
a  chord  of  kingly  generosity,  to  be  able  to  say 
to  a  friend,  "  Here  is  my  copy  of  Keats.  Take 
it,  use  it,  read  it.  There  is  plenty  of  it  for  you 
and  me"  ?  I  would  rather  have  the  lending  of 
my  Keats  than  the  bidding  to  a  banquet. 

So  it  fell  out  that  my  favourite  went  more 
among  my  friends  than  ever,  and  accumulated 
at  a  usurious  rate  all  manner  of  marks  and 
stains,  and  defacements,  and  dog-ears,  and  other 
unworded  comments,  as  well  as  verbal  comments 
expressed  in  pencil  and  ink.  It  is  true  that 
a  rolling  stone  gathers  no  moss,  but  a  rolling 
snowball  gathers  more  snow,  and  moss  and  snow 
are  of  about  equal  value.  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  says,  if  I  may  trust  my  memory,  that 
only  three  things  improve  with  years :  violins, 
wine,  and  meerschaum  pipes.  He  loves  books, 
and  knows  books  as  well  as  any  man  now  living 
— almost  as  well  as  Charles  Lamb  did  when  he 
was  with  us;  and  yet  Dr.  Holmes  does  not 
think  books  worthy  of  being  included  in  the 
list  of  things  that  time  ripens.  Is  this  ingrati- 


90  IGNOEANT  ESSAYS. 

tude  or  carelessness,  or  does  it  mean  that  books 
dwell  apart,  and  are  no  more  to  be  classed  with 
mere  tangible  things  than  angels,  or  mathe- 
matical points,  or  the  winds  of  last  winter  ?  Is 
a  book  to  him  an  ethereal  record  of  a  divine 
trance  ?  an  insubstantial  painting  of  a  splendid 
dream?  the  music  of  a  yesterday  fruitful  in 
heavenly  melody?  the  echo  of  a  syren's  song 
haunting  a  sea  shell  ? 

Does  not  De  Quincey  tell  us  that,  having  lent 
some  books  to  Coleridge,  the  poet  not  only  wrote 
the  lender's  name  in  them,  but  enriched  the 
margins  with  observations  and  comments  on 
the  texts  ?  Who  would  not  give  a  tithe  of  the 
books  he  has  for  one  volume  so  gloriously 
illuminated?  I  remember  when  I  was  a  lad, 
among  lads,  a -friend  of  ours  picked  up  second- 
hand Gary's  Dante,  in  which  was  written  the 
name  of  a  poet  still  living,  but  who  is  almost 
unknown.  We  loved  the  living  poet  for  his  work, 
and  when  the  buyer  told  us  that  the  Dante  bore 
not  only  the  poet's  name,  but  numerous  marginal 
notes  and  hints  in  his  handwriting,  we  all  looked 
upon  the  happy  possessor  with  eyes  of  envious 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  91 

respect.  The  precious  volume  was  shown  to  us, 
not  in  groups,  for  in  gatherings  there  is  peril  of 
a  profaning  laugh,  or  an  unsympathetic  sneer. 
One  by  one  we  were  handed  the  book,  on  still 
country  roads,  upon  the  tranquil  heights  of 
hills,  where  we  were  alone  with  the  brown 
heather  and  the  plover,  or  on  some  barren  cliff 
above  the  summer  sea.  The  familiar  printed 
text  sank  into  insignificance  beside  the  blurred 
pencil  lines.  Any  one  might  buy  a  fair  uncut 
copy  for  a  crown  piece.  The  text  was  common 
property — "  'twas  mine,  'tis  his,  and  has  been 
slave  to  thousands."  But  here  before  us  lay 
revealed  the  private  workings  of  a  poetic  ima- 
gination, fired  by  contact  with  a  master  cf  the 
craft.  To  us  this  volume  disclosed  one  of  our 
heroes,  clad  in  the  homely  garb  of  prose,  speak- 
ing in  his  own  everyday  speech,  and  lifting  up 
his  voice  in  admiration,  wonder,  awe,  to  the 
colossal  demi-god,  in  whose  presence  we  had 
stood  humiliated  and  afeard. 

My  Keats  has  suffered  from  many  pipes, 
many  thumbs,  many  pencils,  many  quills, 
many  pockets.  Not  one  stain,  one  gape,  one 


92  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

blot  of  these  would  I  forego  for  a  spick  and 
span  copy  in  all  the  gorgeous  pomp  of  the  book- 
binder's millinery.  These  blemishes  are  aureolse 
to  me.  They  are  nimbi  around  the  brows  of  the 
gods  and  demi-gods.  who  walk  in  the  triumph  of 
their  paternal  despot  on  the  clouds  metropolitan 
that  embattle  the  heights  of  Parnassus. 

What  a  harvest  of  happy  memories  is  garnered 
in  its  leaves  !  How  well  I  remember  the  day  it 
got  that  faint  yellow  stain  on  the  page  where 
begins  the  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn.  It  was  a 
clear,  bright,  warm,  sunshiny  afternoon  late  in 
the  month  of  May.  Three  of  us  took  a  boat 
and  rowed  down  a  broad  blue  river,  ran  the 
nose  of  the  boat  ashore  on  the  gravel  beach  of 
a  sequestered  island  and  landed.  Pulling  was 
warm  work,  and  we  all  climbed  a  slope, 
reached  the  summit,  and  cast  ourselves  down 
on  the  long  lush  cool  grass,  in  the  shade  of 
whispering  sycamores,  and  in  a  stream  of  air 
that  came  fresh  with  the  cheering  spices  of  the 
hawthorn  blossom. 

One  of  our  company  was  the  best  chamber 
reader  I  have  ever  heard.  His  voice  was 


1IY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  93 

neither  very  melodious  nor  very  full.  Perhaps 
he  was  all  the  better  for  this  because  he  made 
no  effort  at  display.  As  he  read,  the  book 
vanished  from  his  sight,  and  he  leaned  over  the 
poet's  shoulder,  saw  what  the  poet  saw,  and  in 
a  voice  timid  with  the  sense  of  responsibility, 
and  yet  elated  with  a  kind  of  fearing  joy,  told 
of  what  he  saw  in  words  that  never  hurried, 
and  that,  when  uttered,  always  seemed  to  hang 
substantially  in  the  air  like  banners. 

He  discovered  and  related  the  poet's  vision 
rather  than  simulated  passion  to  suit  the  scene. 
I  remember  well  his  reading  of  the  passage  : 

Fair  youth,  beneath  the  trees,  thou  canst  not  leave 
Thy  song,  nor  ever  can  those  trees  be  bare  ; 
Bold  lover,  never,  never  canst  thou  kiss, 
Though  winning  near  the  goal — yet,  do  not  grieve; 
She  cannot  fade  though  thou  hast  not  thy  bliss, 
For  ever  wilt  thou  love  and  she  be  fair  I " 

He  rehearsed  the  whole  of  the  ode  over  and 
over  again  as  we  lay  on  the  grass  watching  the 
vast  chestnuts  and  oaks  bending  over  the  river, 
as  though  they  had  grown  aweary  of  the  sun, 

and  longed  to  glide  into  the  broad  full  stream. 

7 


94  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

As  he  read  the  lines  just  quoted,  he  gave  us 
time  to  hear  the  murmur,  and  to  breathe  the 
fragrance  of  those  immortal  trees.  "  Nor  ever 
can  those  trees  be  bare,"  in  the  text  has  only 
a  semicolon  after  it.  Yet  here  he  paused, 
while  three  wavelets  broke  upon  the  beach,  as 
if  he  could  not  tear  himself  away  from  contem- 
plating the  deathless  verdure,  and  realising  the 
prodigious  edict  pronounced  upon  it.  "Bold 
lover,  never,  never  canst  thou  kiss,  though 
winning  near  the  goal."  At  the  terrible  decree 
he  raised  his  eyes  and  gazed  with  heavy-lidded, 
hopeless  commiseration  at  this  being,  who,  still 
more  unhappy  than  Tithonus,  had  to  immortality 
added  perpetual  youth,  with  passion  for  ever 
strong,  and  denial  for  ever  final. 

"  Yet  do  not  grieve."  This  he  uttered  as  one 
who  pleads  forgiveness  of  a  corpse — merely 
to  try  to  soothe  a  conscience  sensible  of  an 
obligation  that  can  never  now  be  discharged. 
"She  cannot  fade,  though  thou  hast  not  thy 
bliss,  for  ever  wilt  thou  love,  and  she  be  fair ! " 
Here  the  reader,  with  eyes  fixed  and  rayless, 
seemed  by  voice  and  pose  to  be  sunk,  beyond 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  95 

all  power  of  hope,  in  an  abyss  of  despair.  The 
barren  immutability  of  the  spectacle  appeared 
to  weigh  upon  him  more  intolerably  than  the 
wreck  of  a  people.  He  spoke  the  words  in 
a  long  drawn-out  whisper,  and,  after  a  pause, 
dropped  his  head,  and  did  not  resume. 

I  recollect  that  when  the  illusion  he  wrought 
up  so  full}7"  in  my  mind  had  passed  away  in  that 
long  pause,  and  when  I  remembered  that  the 
fancy  of  the  poet  was  expending  itself,  not  on 
beings  whom  he  conceived  originally  as  human, 
but  on  the  figures  of  a  mere  vase,  I  was  seized 
with  a  fierce  desire  to  get  up  and  seek  that  vase 
through  all  the  world  until  I  found  it,  and  then 
smash  it  into  ten  thousand  atoms. 

When  I  had  written  the  last  sentence,  I  took 
up  the  volume  to  decide  where  I  should  recom- 
mence, and  I  "  turned  the  page,  and  turned  the 
page."  I  lived  over  again  the  days  not  forgotten, 
but  laid  aside  in  memory  to  be  borne  forth 
in  periods  of  high  festival.  I  could  not  bring 
myself  back  from  the  comrades  of  old,  and  the 
marvels  of  the  great  magician,  to  this  poor  street, 
this  solitude,  and  this  squalid  company  of  my 


96  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

own  thoughts — thoughts  so  trivial  and  so  mean 
compared  with  the  imperial  visions  into  which 
I  had  been  gazing,  that  I  was  glad  for  the 
weariness  which  came  upon  me.  and  grateful  to 
gray  dawn  that  glimmered  against  the  blind 
and  absolved  me  from  further  obligation  for 
that  sitting. 

On  turning  over  the  leaves  without  reading, 
I  find  Hyperion  opens  most  readily  of  all, 
and  seems  to  have  fared  worst  from  deliberate 
and  unintentional  comment.  Much  of  the 
wear  and  tear  and  pencil  marks  are  to  be  set 
down  against  myself ;  for  when  I  take  the 
book  with  no  definite  purpose  I  turn  to 
Hyperion,  as  a  blind  man  to  the  warmth  of 
the  sun.  Some  qualities  of  the  poem  I  can  feel 
and  appreciate  ;  but  always  in  its  presence  I 
am  weighed  down  by  the  consciousness  that  my 
deficiency  in  some  attribute  of  perception  debars 
me  from  undreamed-of  privileges. 

I  recall  one  evening  in  a  pine  glen,  with  one 
man  and  Hyperion.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
match  this  man  or  me  as  readers.  I  don't 
*hink  there  can  be  ten  worse  employing  the 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  97 

English  language  to-day.  I  not  only  do  not 
by  any  inflection  of  voice  expound  what  I  utter, 
but  I  am  often  incapable  of  speaking  the  words 
before  me.  I  take  in  a  line  at  a  glance,  see  its 
import  with  my  own  imagination  apart  from 
the  verbiage,  which  leaves  not  a  shadow  of  an 
impression  on  my  mind.  When  I  come  to  the 
next  line  I  grow  suddenly  alive  to  the  fact  that 
I  have  to  speak  off  the  former  one.  I  am  in  a 
hurry  to  see  what  line  two  has  to  show  ;  so, 
instead  of  giving  the  poet's  words  for  line  one,  I 
give  my  own  description  of  the  vision  it  has 
conjured  up  in  my  mind.  This  is  bad  enough  in 
all  conscience ;  but  the  friend  of  whom  I  speak 
now,  behaves  even  worse.  His  plan  of  reading 
is  to  stop  his  voice  in  the  middle  of  line  one,  and 
proceed  to  discuss  the  merits  of  line  two,  which 
he  had  read  with  his  eye,  but  not  with  his  lips, 
and  of  which  the  listener  is  ignorant,  unless  he 
happen  to  know  the  poem  by  rote. 

On  that  evening  in  the  glen  I  pulled  out 
Keats,  and  turned,  at  my  friend's  request,  to 
Jlyperion,  and  began  to  read  aloud.  He  was 
more  patient  than  mercy's  self ;  but  occasion- 


IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 


ally,  when  I  did  a  most  exceptionally  bad 
murder  on  the  text,  he  would  writhe  and  cry 
out,  and  I  would  go  back  and  correct  myself, 
and  start  afresh. 

He  had  a  big  burly  frame,  and  a  deep  full 
voice  that  shouted  easily,  and  some  of  the  com- 
ments shouted  as  I  read  are  indicated  by  pencil 
marks  in  the  margin.  The  writing  was  not 
done  then,  but  much  later,  when  he  and  I  had 
shaken  hands,  and  he  had  gone  sixteen  thousand 
miles  away.  As  he  was  about  to  set  out  on 
that  long  journey,  he  said,  "  In  seven  years 
more  I'll  drop  in  and  have  a  pipe  with  you."  It 
had  been  seven  years  since  I  saw  him  before. 
The  notes  on  the  margin  are  only  keys  to  what 
was  said  ;  for  I  fear  the  comment  made  was 
more  bulky  than  the  text,  and  the  text  and 
comment  together  would  far  exceed  the 
limits  of  such  an  essay  as  this.  I  therefore 
curtail  greatly,  and  omit  much. 

I  read  down  the  first  page  without  meeting  any 
interruption ;  but  when  I  came  in  page  two  on 

"She  would  have  ta'en 
Achilles  by  the  hair  and  bent  his  neck," 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  99 

he  cried  out,  "  Stop  !  Don't  read  the  line 
following.  It  is  bathos  compared  with  that  line 
and  a  half.  It  is  paltry  and  weak  beside  what 
you  have  read.  '  Ta'en  Achilles  by  the  hair  and 
bent  his  neck/  By  Jove  !  can  you  not  see  the 
white  muscles  start  out  in  his  throat,  and  the 
look  of  rage,  defeat  and  agony  on  the  face  of  the 
Greek  bruiser  ?  But  how  flat  falls  the  next 
line :  '  Or  with  a  finger  stay'd  Ixion's  wheel/ 
What's  the  good  of  stopping  Ixion's  wheel  ? 
Besides,  a  crowbar  would  be  much  better  than  a 
finger.  It  is  a  line  for  children,  not  for  grown 
men.  It  exhausts  the  subject.  It  is  too  literal. 
There  is  no  question  left  to  ask.  But  the  vague 
*  Ta'en  Achilles  by  the  hair  and  lent  his  neck '  is 
perfect.  You  can  see  her  knee  in  the  hollow  of 
his  back,  and  her  fingers  twisted  in  his  hair. 
But  the  image  of  the  goddess  dabbling  in  that 
river  of  hell  after  Ixion's  wheel  is  contemptible." 
He  next  stopped  me  at 

"Until  at  length,  old  Saturn  lifted  up 
His  faded  eyes,  and  saw  his  kingdom  gone.15 

"  What  an  immeasurable  vision  Keats  must 


100  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

have  had  of  the  old  bankrupt  Titan,  when  he 
wrote  the  second  line  !  Taken  in  the  context  it  is 
simply  overwhelming.  Keats  must  have  sprung 
up  out  of  his  chair  as  he  saw  the  gigantic 
head  upraised,  and  the  prodigious  grief  of  the 
grey-haired  god.  But  Keats  was  not  happy  in 
the  matter  of  full  stops.  Here  again  what  comes 
after  weakens.  We  get  no  additional  strength 
out  of 


u<And  all  the  gloom  and  sorrow  of  the  place 
And  that  fair  kneeling  Goddess.' 

The  '  gloom  and  sorrow '  and  the  '  goddess '  aro 
abominably  anticlimacteric." 

"Yes,  there  must  be  a  golden  victory; 
There   must   be   gods  thrown   down   and   trumpets 

blown 

Of  triumph  calm,  and  hymns  of  festival 
Upon  the  gold  clouds  metropolitan, 
Voices  of  soft  proclaim,  and  silver  stir 
Of  strings  in  hollow  shells ;  and  there  shall  be 
Beautiful  things  made  new,  for  the  surprise 
Of  the  sky-children  ;  I  will  give  command : 
Thea  !   Thea  !   Thea  !  where  is  Saturn  ? " 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  101 

"  Read  that  again  I "  cried  my  friend,  clinging 
to  the  grass  and  breathing  hard.  "  Again  ! " 
he  cried,  when  I  had  finished  the  second  time. 
And  then,  before  I  could  proceed,  he  sprang 
to  his  feet,  carrying  out  the  action  in  the  text 
immediately  following : 

"This  passion  lifted  him  upon  his  feet, 
And  made  his  hands  to  struggle  in  the  air." 

"  Come  on,  John  Milton,"  cried  my  friend, 
excitedly  sparring  at  the  winds, — "  come  on,  and 
beat  that,  and  well  let  you  put  all  your  adjec- 
tives behind  your  nouns,  and  your  verb  last,  and 
your  nominative  nowhere  !  Why  man," — this 
being  addressed  to  the  Puritan  poet — "it 
carried  Keats  himself  off  his  legs  ;  that's  more 
than  anything  you  ever  wrote  when  you  were 
old  did  for  you.  There's  the  smell  of  midnight 
oil  off  your  later  spontaneous  efforts,  John  Milton. 

"  When  Milton  went  loafing  about  and  didn't 
mind  much  what  he  was  writing  he  could  give 
any  of  them  points  " —  (I  deplore  the  lan- 
guage) "  any  of  them,  ay,  Shakespeare  him- 


102  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

self  points  in  a  poem.     In  a  poem,   sir  "  (this 
to  me),  "  Milton  could  give  Shakespeare  a  hun- 
dred and  one  out  of  a   hundred  and  lick   the 
Bard  easily.     How  the  man  who  was  such  a 
fool  as  to  write  Shakespeare's  poems  had  the 
good  sense  to  write  Shakespeare's  plays  I  can 
never  understand.     The  most  un-Shakesperian 
poems  in  the  language  are  Shakespeare's.  I  never 
read  Cowley,  but  it  seems  to  me  Cowley  ought  to 
have  written  Shakespeare's  poems,  and  then  his 
obscurity  would  have  been  complete.     If  Milton 
only  didn't  take  the  trouble  to  be  great  he  would 
have  been  greater.    As  far  as  I  know  there  are 
no  English  poets  who  improved  when  they  ceased 
to  be  amateurs  and  became  professional  poets, 
except  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson.    Shelley  and 
Keats  were  never  regular  race-horses.  They  were 
colts  that  bolted  in  their  first  race  and  ran  until 
they  dropped.     It  was  a  good  job  Shakespeare 
gave  up  writing  rhymes  and  posing  as  a  poet.   It 
was  not  until  he  despaired  of  becoming  one  and 
took  to  the  drama  that  he  began  to  feel  his  feet 
and  show  his  pace.     If  he  had  suspected  he  was 
a  great  poet  he  would  have  adopted  the  airs  of 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS  103 

the  profession  and  been  ruined.  In  his  time  no 
one  thought  of  calling  a  play  a  poem — that  was 
what  saved  the  greatest  of  all  our  poets  to  us. 
The  only  two  things  Shakespeare  didn't  know 
is  that  a  play  may  be  a  poem  and  that  his 
plays  are  the  finest  poems  finite  man  as  he  is  now 
constructed  can  endure.  It  is  all  nonsense  to 
say  man  shall  never  look  on  the  like  of  Shake- 
speare again.  It  is  not  the  poet  superior  to 
Shakespeare  man  now  lacks,  but  the  man  to 
apprehend  him." 

I  looked  around  uneasily,  and  found,  to  my 
great  satisfaction,  that  there  was  no  stranger  in 
view.  My  friend  occupied  a  position  of  re- 
sponsibility and  trust,  and  it  would  be  most 
injurious  if  a  rumour  got  abroad  that  not  only 
did  he  read  and  admire  verse,  but  that  he  held 
converse  with  the  shades  of  departed  poets  as 
well.  In  old  days  men  who  spoke  to  the 
vacant  air  were  convicted  of  necromancy  and 
burned;  in  our  times  men  offending  in  this 
manner  are  suspected  of  poetry  and  ostracized. 

As  soon  as  my  friend  was  somewhat  calmed, 
and  had  cast  himself  down  again  and  lit  a 


104  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

pipe,  I  resumed  my  reading.     He  allowed  me 
to  proceed  without  interruption  until  I  came  to 

"His  palace  bright, 

Basti  m'd  with  pyramids  of  glowing  gold, 
And  touch'd  with  shade  of  bronzed  obelisks, 
Glared  a  blood-red  through  all  its  thousand  courts, 
Arches,  and  domes,  and  fiery  galleries  ; 
And  all  its  curtains  of  Aurorian  clouds 
Flushed  angerly  :  while  sometimes  eagles'  wings, 
Unseen  before  by  Gods  or  wondering  men, 
Darkened  the  place  ;  and  neighing  steeds  were  heard, 
Not  heard  before  by  Gods  or  wondering  men." 

"Prodigious!"  he  shouted.  "Go  over  that 
again.  Keep  the  syllables  wide  apart.  It 
is  a  good  rule  of  water-colour  sketching  not 
to  be  too  nice  about  joining  the  edges  of  the 
tints ;  this  lets  the  light  in.  Keep  the 
syllables  as  far  apart  as  ever  you  can,  and  let 
the  silentness  in  between  to  clear  up  the  music. 
How  the  gods  and  the  wondering  men  must 
have  wondered !  Do  you  know,  I  am  sure 
Keats  often  frightened,  terrified  himself  with 
his  own  visions.  You  remember  he  says 
somewhere  he  doesn't  think  any  one  could 
dare  to  read  some  one  or  another  aloud  at 


I V  E 
MY  COPY  OF  KEATS. 


midnight.  I  believe  that  often  in  the 
midnight  he  sat  and  cowered  before  the 
gigantic  sights  and  sounds  that  reigned 
despotically  over  his  fancy." 

"  0  dreams  of  day  and  niglit ! 
0  monstrous  forms  !     0  effigies  of  pain  ! 
0  spectres  busy  in  a  cold,  cold  gloom  ! 

0  lank-ear'd  Phantoms  of  black- weeded  pools ! 
Why  do  I  know  ye  ?  why  have  I  seen  ye  ?  why 
Is  my  eternal  essence  thus  distraught 

To  see  and  to  behold  these  horrors  new? 
Saturn  is  fallen,  am  I  too  to  fall? 
Am  I  to  leave  this  haven  of  my  rest, 
This  cradle  of  my  glory,  this  soft  clime, 
This  calm  luxuriance  of  blissful  light, 
These  crystalline  pavilions,  and  pure  fanes, 
Of  all  my  lucent  empire  ?    It  is  left 
Deserted,  void,  nor  any  haunt  of  mine. 
The  blaze,  the  splendour,  and  the  symmetry 

1  cannot  see — but  darkness,  death  and  darkness. 
Even  here,  into  my  centre  of  repose, 

The  shady  visions  come  to  domineer, 

Insult,  and  blind  and  stifle  up  my  pomp — 

Fall  ! — No,  by  Tellus  and  her  briny  robes ! 

Over  the  fiery  frontier  of  my  realms 

I  will  advance  a  terrible  right  arm 

Shall  scare  that  infant  thuiulerer,  rebel  Jovey 

And  bid  old  Saturn  take  his  throne  again." 


106  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

"What  more  magnificent  prelude  ever  was 
uttered  to  oath  than  the  portion  of  this  speech 
preceding  '  No,  by  Tellus ' !  What  more 
overpowering,  leading  up  to  an  overwhelming 
threat, than  the  whole  passage  going  before '  Over 
the  fiery  frontier  of  my  realms  I  will  advance 
a  terrible  right  arm ' !  What  menacing 
deliberativeness  there  is  in  this  whole  speech, 
and  what  utter  completeness  of  ruin  to  come 
is  indicated  by  those  words,  '  I  will  advance 
a  terrible  right  arm ' !  You  feel  no  sooner 
shall  that  arm  move  than  '  rebel  Jove's '  reign 
will  be  at  an  end,  and  that  chaos  will  be  left 
for  Saturn  to  rule  and  fashion  once  more  into 
order.  Shut  up  the  poem  now.  That's  plenty 
of  Hyperion,  and  the  other  books  of  it  are 
inferior.  There  is  more  labour  and  more 
likeness  to  Paradise  Lost!'  And  so  my  friend, 
who  is  16,000  miles  away,  and  I  turned  from 
the  Titanic  theme,  and  spoke  of  the  local 
board  of  guardians,  or  some  young  girl  whose 
beauty  was  making  rich  misery  in  the  hearts 
of  young  men  in  those  old  days. 

There  is  no  other  long  poem  in  the  volume 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  107 

bearing  any  marks  which  indicate  such  close 
connection  with  any  individual  reader  as  in 
the  case  of  Hyperion.  Endymion  boasts  only 
one  mark,  and  that  expressing  admiration  of 
the  relief  afforded  from  monotony  of  the  heroic 
couplets  by  the  introduction  in  the  opening 
of  the  double  rhyming  verses : 

"  Full  of  sweet  dreams,  and  health,  and  quiet  breathing 
Therefore,  on  every  morrow,  are  we  wreathing — " 

The  friend  to  whom  this  mark  is  due  never 
handled  the  volume,  never  even  saw  it;  but 
once  upon  a  time  when  he,  another  man,  and 
I  had  got  together,  and  were  talking  of  the 
"  gallipot  poet/'  the  first  friend  said  he 
always  regarded  this  couplet  as  most  happily 
placed  where  it  appears.  So  when  I  reached 
home  I  marked  my  copy  at  the  lines.  Now, 
when  I  open  the  volume  and  find  that  mark,  it 
is  as  good  to  me  as,  better  than,  a  photograph 
of  my  friend ;  for  I  not  only  see  his  face  and 
figure,  but  once  more  he  places  his  index- 
finger  on  the  table,  as  we  three  sit  smoking, 
and  whispers  out  the  six  opening  lines,  ending- 


108  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

with  the  two  I  have  quoted.  Suppose  I  too 
should  some  day  go  16,000  miles  away  from 
London,  and  carry  this  volume  with  me,  shall 
I  not  be  able  to  open  it  when  I  please,  and 
recall  what  I  then  saw  and  heard,  what  I  now 
see  and  hear,  as  distinctly  as  though  no  long 
Interval  of  ocean  or  of  months  lay  between 
to-night  and  that  hour? 

Can  I  ever  forget  my  burly  tenor  friend, 
who  sang  and  composed  songs,  and  dinted  the 
line  in  The  JZve  of  St.  Agnes, 

"The  silver,  snarling  trumpets,  'gan  to  chide," 

and  declared  a  hundred  times  in  my  unwearied 
ears  that  no  more  happy  epithet  than  snarling 
could  be  found  for  trumpets?  He  over  and 
over  again  assured  ine,  and  over  and  over 
again  I  loved  to  listen  to  his  fancy  running 
riot  on  the  line,  how  he  heard  and  saw  brazen 
and  silver  and  golden  griffins  quarrelling  in 
the  roof  and  around  his  ears  as  the  trumpets 
blared  through  the  echoing  halls  and  corridors. 
He,  too,  marked 

"The  music,  yearning  like  a  God  in  pain.* 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  109 

"  Keats/'  be  would  say,  "  seems  to  have  got  not 
only  at  the  spirit  of  the  music,  but  at  the  very 
flesh  and  blood  of  it.  He  has  done  one  thing 
for  me,"  my  friend  continued.  "  Before  I  read 
these  lines,  and  others  of  the  same  kind,  in 
Keats,  my  favourite  tunes  always  represented 
an  emotion  of  my  own  mind.  Now  they  stand 
for  individual  characters  in  scenes,  like 
descriptions  of  people  in  a  book.  When  I 
hear  music  now  I  am  with  the  Falstaffs  or  the 
Romolas,  with  Quasimodo  or  Julius  Ctesar." 

I  have  been  regarding  the  indentures  in  the 
volume  chronologically.  The  next  marks  of 
importance  in  the  order  of  the  years  occur,  one 
in  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  the  other  in  the 
Ode  to  a  Nightingale.  These  marks,  more 
than  any  others,  I  regard  with  grateful  memory. 
They  are  not  the  work  of  the  hand  of  him  for 
whom  I  value  them.  I  have  good  reason 
to  look  on  him  as  a  valid  friend.  For  months 
between  him  and  me  there  had  existed  an 
acquaintance  necessarily  somewhat  close,  but 
wholly  uninformed  with  friendship.  We  spoke 
to  one  another  as  Mr.  So-and-so.  Neither  of 


110  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

us  suspected  that  the  other  had  any  toleration 
of  poets  or  poetry.  Our  commerce  had  been 
in  mere  prose.  One  day,  in  mid-winter,  when 
a  chilling  fog  hung  over  London,  I  chanced 
to  go  into  a  room  where  he  was  writing 
alone.  After  a  formal  greeting,  I  complained 
of  the  cold.  He  dropped  his  pen  and  looked 
up.  "  Yes,"  he  said,  "  very  cold  and  dark  as 
night.  Do  you  know  the  coldest  night  that 
ever  was  ? "  I  answered  that  I  did  not.  "  It 
was  St.  Agnes's  Eve,  when 

"'The  owl,  for  all  his  feathers,  was  a-cold.' " 

And  so  we  fell  to  talking  about  Keats,  and 
talked  and  talked  for  hours ;  and  before  the 
first  hour  of  our  talk  had  passed  we  had 
ceased  "  Mistering  "  one  another  for  ever.  The 
fire  of  his  enthusiasm  rose  higher  and  higher 
as  the  minutes  swept  by.  He  knew  one  poet 
personally,  for  whose  verse  I  had  profound 
respect,  and  this  poet,  he  told  me,  worshipped 
Keats.  Often  in  our  talks  I  laid  plots  for 
bringing  him  back  to  the  simple  sentence, 
"  You  should  hear  M.  talk  about  Keats/'  The 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  Ill 

notion  that  any  one  who  knew  M.  could  think 
M.  would  talk  to  me  about  Keats  intoxicated 
me.  "  He  would  not  let  me  listen  to  him  ?  "  I 
said  half  fearfully.  "  M.  would  talk  to  any  one 
about  Keats — to  even  a  lawyer."  How  I  wished 
at  that  moment  I  was  a  Lord  Chancellor  who 
might  stand  in  M/s  path.  -I  have,  in  a  way, 
been  near  to  that  poet  since.  I  might  almost 
have  said  to  him, 

"  So  near,  too  !    You  could  hear  my  sigh, 
Or  see  my  case  with  half  an  eye  ; 
But  must  not — there  are  reasons  why.* 

So  this  friend  I  speak  of  now  and  I  came  to 
be  great  friends  indeed.  We  often  met  and  held 
carnivals  of  verse,  carnivals  among  the  starry 
lamps  of  poetry.  He  had  a  subtle  instinct 
that  saw  the  jewel,  however  it  might  be  set. 
He  owned  himself  the  faculty  of  the  poet, 
which  gave  him  ripe  knowledge  of  all  matters 
technical  in  the  setting. 

"Now  more  than  ever  seems  it  rich  to  die, 
To  cease  upon  the  midnight  with  no  pain." 

He  would  quote  these  two  lines  and  cry,  "  Waa 


112  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

ever  death  so  pangless  as  that  spoken  of  here  ? 
'  To  cease  upon  the  midnight ! '  Here  is  no 
struggle,  no  regret,  no  fear.  This  death  is  softer 
and  lighter  and  smoother  than  the  falling  of  the 
shadow  of  night  upon  a  desert  of  noiseless  sand." 
For  a  long  time  the  name  of  one  man  had 
been  almost  daily,  in  my  ears.  I  had  been 
hearing  much  through  the  friend  to  whom  I 
have  last  referred  about  his  intuitive  eye  and 
critical  acumen.  That  friend  had  informed  me 
of  the  influence  which  his  opinion  earned  ;  and 
of  how  this  man  held  Keats  high  above  poets 
to  whom  we  have  statues  of  brass,  whose  names 
we  give  to  our  streets.  My  curiosity  was  ex- 
cited, and,  while  my  desire  to  meet  this  man 
was  largely  mingled  with  timidity,  I  often  felt 
a  jealous  pang  at  thinking  that  many  of  the 
people  with  whom  I  was  acquainted  knew  him. 
At  length  I  became  distantly  connected  with 
an  undertaking  in  which  he  was  prominently 
concerned.  Through  the  instrumentality  of 
one  friendly  to  us  both,  we  met.  It  was  a 
sacred  night  for  me,  and  I  sat  and  listened, 
enchanted.  After  some  hours  the  talk  wheeled 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  113 

round  upon  sonnets.  "Sonnets!"  he  cried, 
starting  up ;  "  who  can  repeat  the  lines  about 
Cortez  in  Keats  ?  You  all  know  it."  Some 
one  began  to  read  or  repeat  the  sonnet.  Until 
coming  upon  the  words,  "  or  like  stout  Cortez." 
"  That's  it,  that's  it !  Now  go  on." 

"Or  like  stout  Cortez  when  with  eagle  eyes 

He  stared  at  the  Pacific — and  all  his  men 
Look'd  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise — 
Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien/' 

" '  And  all  his  men  looked  at  each  other  with 
a  wild  surmise/  "  he  repeated,  " '  silent  upon  a 
peak  in  Darien/  The  most  enduring  group 
ever  designed.  They  are  standing  there  to  this 
day.  They  will  stand  there  for  ever  and  for 
ever;  they  are  immutable.  When  an  artist 
carves  them  you  may  know  that  Buonarotti  is 
risen  from  the  dead  and  is  once  more  abroad." 

That  portion  of  a  book  which  is  called  a 
preface  and  put  first,  is  always  the  last  written. 
It  may  be  human,  but  it  is  not  logical,  that  when 
a  man  starts  he  does  not  know  what  he  has  to 
say  first,  until  he  finds  out  by  an  elaborate  guess 


114  IGNOHANT  ESSAYS. 

of  several  hundred  pages  what  he  wants  to  say 
last.  It  would  be  unbecoming  of  me  in  a 
collection  of  ignorant  essays  to  affect  to  know 
less  than  a  person  of  average  intelligence  ;  but 
I  am  quite  sincere  when  I  say  I  am  not  aware 
who  the  author  is  of  the  great  aphorism  that 
"After  all,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  human  nature 
in  man."  There  is,  I  would  venture  to  say, 
more  human  nature  than  logic  in  man.  My 
copy  of  Keats  is  no  exception  to  the  general 
rule  of  books.  The  preface  ought  to  precede 
immediately  the  colophon.  Yet  it  is  in  the 
forefront  of  the  volume,  before  even  the  very 
title  page  itself.  It  forms  no  integral  part  of 
the  volume,  and  is  unknown  to  the  printer  or 
publisher.  It  was  given  to  me  by  a  thoughtful 
and  kind-hearted  friend  at  whose  side  I  worked 
for  a  considerable  while.  One  time,  years  ago,  he 
took  a  holiday  and  vanished,  going  from  among 
us  I  knew  not  whither.  On  coming  back  he  pre- 
sented each  of  his  associates  with  something  out 
of  his  store  of  spoil.  That  which  now  forms  the 
preface  to  my  copy  he  gave  me.  It  consists  of 
twelve  leaves ;  twelve  myrtle  leaves  on  a  spray. 


MY  COPY  OF  KEATS.  115 

When  he  was  in  Rome  he  bore  me  in  mind  and 
plucked  this  sprig  at  the  grave  of  the  poet.  It 
is  consoling  to  remember  Keats  is  buried  so  far 
away  from  where  he  was  born,  when  we  cannot 
forget  that  the  abominable  infamy  of  publishing 
his  love-letters  was  committed  in  his  own 
country — here  in  England.  His  spirit  was  lent 
to  earth  only  for  a  little  while,  and  he  gave 
all  of  it  to  us.  But  we  were  not  satisfied.  We 
must  have  his  heart's  blood  and  his  heart  too. 
The  gentlemen  who  attacked  his  poetry  when 
he  was  alive  really  knew  no  better,  and  tried, 
perhaps,  to  be  as  honest  as  would  suit  their 
private  ends.  But  the  publication  of  the  dead 
man's  love-letters,  fifty  years  after  he  had 
passed  away,  cannot  be  attributed  even  to 
ignorance.  If  any  money  was  made  out  of  the 
book  it  would  be  a  graceful  act  to  give  it  to 
some  church  where  the  burial  ground  is  scant, 
and  the  parish  is  in  need  of  a  Potter's  Field. 

When  I  take  down  my  copy  of  Keats,  and 
look  through  it  and  beyond  it,  I  feel  that  while 
it  is  left  to  me  I  cannot  be  wholly  shorn  of  my 
friends.  It  is  the  only  album  of  photographs  I 


116  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

possess.  The  faces  I  see  in  it  are  not  for  any 
eye  but  mine.  It  is  my  private  portrait  gallery, 
in  which  hang  the  portraits  of  my  dearest 
friends.  The  marks  and  blots  are  intelligible  to 
no  eye  but  mine  ;  they  are  the  cherished  hiero- 
glyphics of  the  heart.  I  close  the  book ;  I  lock 
up  the  hieroglyphics ;  I  feel  certain  the  book 
will  last  my  time.  Should  it  survive  me  and 
pass  into  new  hands — into  the  hands  of  some 
boy  now  unborn,  who  may  pluck  out  of  it  posies 
of  love-phrases  for  his  fresh-cheeked  sweetheart 
— he  will  know  nothing  of  the  import  these 
marginal  notes  bore  to  one  who  has  gone  before 
him;  unless,  indeed,  out  of  some  cemetery  of 
ephemeral  literature  he  digs  up  this  key — this 
Rosetta  stone. 


DECAY  OF  THE  SUBLIME. 

THE  sublime  is  dying.  It  has  been  pining 
a  long  time.  At  last  dissolution  has  set  in. 
Nothing  can  save  it  but  another  incursion  of 
Goths  and  Huns ;  and  as  there  are  no  Goths 
and  Huns  handy  just  now,  the  sublime  must 
die  out,  and  die  out  soon.  S  You  can  know  what 
a  man  is  by  the  company  he  keeps.  You  can 
judge  a  people  by  the  ideas  they  retain  more 
than  by  the  ideas  they  acquire.  The  philology 
of  a  tongue,  from  its  cradle  to  its  grave,  is  the 
social  history  of  the  people  who  spoke  it.  To- 
day you  may  mark  the  progress  of  civilisation 
by  the  decay  of  the  sublime.  Glance  at  a  few 
of  the  nations  of  earth  as  they  stand.  Italy 
and  Spain  still  hold  with  the  sublime  in  litera- 
ture and  art,  although,  being  exhausted  stocks, 
they  cannot  produce  it  any  longer.  France  is 


118  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

cynical,  smart,  artistic,  but  never  was  and  never 
I  can  be  sublime,  so  long  as  vanity  rules  her ;  and 
yet,  by  the  irony  of  selection,  sublime  is  one  of 
her  favourite  words.  Central  Europe  has  had 
her  sublime  phases,  but  cannot  be  even  thought 
of  now  in  connection  with  the  quality ;  and 
Eussia  and  Turkey  are  barbarous  still.  If  we 
come  to  the  active  pair  of  nationalities  in  the 
progress  of  current  civilisation,  the  United 
States  and  England,  we  find  the  sublime  in 
very  poor  case. 

Young  England  across  the  water  is  the  most 
progressive  nation  of  our  age,  because  it  is  the 
most  practical.  If  ever  there  was  a  man  who 
put  his  foot  on  the  neck  of  the  sublime,  that 
man  is  Uncle  Sam.  His  contribution  to  the 
arts  is  almost  nothing.  His  outrages  against 
established  artistic  canons  have  been  innume- 
rable. He  owns  a  new  land  without  traditions. 
He  laughs  at  all  traditions.  He  has  never 
raised  a  saint  or  a  mummy  or  a  religion  (Mor- 
monism  he  stole  from  the  East),  a  crusader, 
a  tyrant,  a  painter,  a  sculptor,  a  musician,  a 
dramatist,  an  inquisition,  a  star  chamber,  a 


DECAY  OF  THE  SUBLIME.  119 

council  of  ten.  All  his  efforts  have  been  in  a 
strictly  practical  direction,  and  most  of  his 
efforts  have  been  crowned  with  success.  He 
has  devoted  his  leisure  time,  the  hours  not 
spent  in  cutting  down  forests  or  drugging 
Indians  with  whisky,  to  laughing  at  the  foolish 
old  notions  which  the  foolish  old  countries 
cherish.  He  had  a  wonderfully  fertile  estate 
of  two  thousand  million  acres,  about  only  one 
fourth  of  which  is  even  to  this  day  under 
direct  human  management.  In  getting  these 
five  hundred  million  acres  of  land  under  him 
he  had  met  all  kinds  of  ground — valley,  forest, 
mountain,  plain.  But  in  none  of  these  did  he 
find  anything  but  axes  and  whisky  of  the 
least  use.  No  mountain  had  been  sanctified  to 
him  by  first  earthly  contact  with  the  two  Tables 
of  the  Law.  No  plain  had  been  rendered  sacred 
as  that  upon  which  the  miraculous  manna  fell  to 
feed  the  chosen  people.  No  inland  sea  had  been 
the  scene  of  a  miraculous  draught  of  fishes.  All 
the  land  acquired  and  cultivated  by  Uncle  Sam 
came  to  him  by  the  right  of  whisky  and  the 
axe.  The  mountain  was  nothing  more  than  so 


120  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

much  land  placed  at  a  certain  angle  that  made 
it  of  little  use  for  tillage.  The  plains,  the 
rivers,  and  inland  seas  had  a  simply  commercial 
value  in  his  eyes.  He  had  no  experience  of  a 
miracle  of  any  kind,  and  he  did  not  see  why  he 
should  bow  down  and  respect  a  mountain, 
that,  to  him,  was  no  more  than  so  many 
thousand  acres  on  an  incline  unfavourable  to 
cultivation.  Such  a  condition  of  the  ground 
was  a  bore,  and  he  would  have  cut  down  the 
mountain  as  he  had  cut  down  the  Indian  and 
the  forest,  if  he  had  known  how  to  accomplish 
the  feat.  He  saw  nothing  mystic  in  the  waters 
or  the  moon.  Were  the  rivers  and  lakes  whole- 
some to  drink  and  useful  for  carriage,  and  well 
stocked  with  fish  ?  These  were  the  questions  he 
asked  about  the  waters.  Would  there  be  moon- 
light enough  for  riding  and  working  ?  was  the 
only  question  he  asked  about  that  "orbed  maiden 
with  white  fire  laden  whom  mortals  call  the 
moon."  His  notions,  his  plains,  his  rivers,  his 
lakes,  were  all  "  big,"  but  he  never  thought  of 
calling  them  sublime.  On  his  own  farm  he  failed 
•  to  find  any  present  trace  of  the  supernatural ; 


DECAY  OF  THE  SUBLIME.  121 

and  he  discovered  no  trace  of  the  supernatural 
in  tradition,  for  there  was  no  tradition  once  the 
red  man  had  been  washed  into  his  grave  with 
whisky.  Hence  Uncle  Sam  began  treating  the 
supernatural  with  familiarity,  and  matters  built 
on  the  supernatural  with  levity.  Now  without 
the  supernatural  the  sublime  cannot  exist  any 
length  of  time,  if  at  all. 

It  may  be  urged  it  is  unreasonable  to  hold 
that  the  Americans  have  done  away  with  the 
sublime,  since  in  the  history  of  all  nations  the 
earlier  centuries  were,  as  in  America,  devoted 
to  material  affairs.  There  is  one  fact  bearing 
on  this  which  should  not  be  left  out  of  count, 
namely,  that  America  did  not  start  from 
barbarism,  or  was  not  raised  on  a  site  where 
barbarism  had  overrun  a  high  state  of  civili- 
sation. The  barbarous  hordes  of  the  north 
effaced  the  civilisation  of  old  Rome,  and  raised 
upon  its  ashes  a  new  people,  the  Italians,  who 
in  time  led  the  way  in  art,  as  the  old  Romans 
had  before  them.  The  Renaissance  was  a 
second  crop  raised  off  the  same  ground  by 
new  men.  The  arts  Rome  had  borrowed  from 


122  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

Greece  had  been  trampled  down  by  Goths,  who, 
when  they  found  themselves  in  the  land  of 
milk  and  honey,  sat  down  to  enjoy  the  milk 
and  honey,  until  suddenly  the  germs  of  old  art 
struck  root,  and  once  more  all  eyes  turned  to 
Italy  for  principles  of  beauty.  But  America 
started  with  the  civilisation  of  a  highly  civi- 
lised age.  She  did  not  rear  her  own  civilisation 
on  her  own  soil.  She  did  not  borrow  her  arts 
from  any  one  country.  She  simply  peopled  her 
virgin  plains  with  the  sons  of  all  the  earth,  who 
brought  with  them  the  culture  of  their  re- 
spective nationalities.  She  has  not  followed 
the  ordinary  course  of  nations,  from  conflict  to 
power,  from  power  to  prosperity,  from  prosperity 
to  the  arts,  luxury,  and  decay.  She  started  with 
prosperity,  and  the  first  use  she  made  of  her 
prosperity  was,  not  to  cultivate  the  fine  arts  in 
her  own  people,  but  to  laugh  at  them  in  others. 
In  the  individual  man  the  sense  of  humour 
grows  with  years.  In  nations  the  sense  of 
humour  develops  with  centuries.  The  literature 
of  nations  begins  with  battle-soflgs  and  hymns, 
and  ends  with  burlesques  and  blasphemies. 


DECAY  OF  THE  SUBLIME.  123 


Now  although  America  has  begun  with  bur- 
lesques and  blasphemies,  no  one  can  for  a 
moment  imagine  that  America  is  not  going  to 
create  a  noble  literature  of  her  own.  She  is 
destined  not  only  to  found  and  build  up  a  noble 
literature,  but  one  which  will  be  unique. 
When  she  has  time,  when  she  has  let  most  of 
those  idle  one  thousand  five  hundred  million 
acres,  she  will  begin  writing  her  books.  By 
that  time  she  will  have  running  in  her  veins 
choice  blood  from  every  race  on  earth,  and  it  is 
a  matter  of  certainty  she  will  give  the  world 
many  delights  now  undreamed  of.  No  other 
nation  on  earth  will  have,  or  ever  has  had,  such 
an  opportunity  of  devoting  attention  to  man  in 
his  purely  domestic  and  social  relations.  The 
United  States  of  to-day  has,  for  practical  pur- 
poses, no  foreign  policy.  She  has  no  foreign 
rivals,  she  is  not  likely  to  have  foreign  wars, 
while  in  her  own  country  she  has  large  bodies 
of  men  from  every  people  on  the  world.  She 
owns  the  largest  assorted  lot  of  mankind  on  the 
globe,  and  as  years  go  by  we  may  safely  con- 
clude she  will  add  to  the  variety  and  number 


124  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


of  her  sons.     In  all  this  appears  no  hope  for  the    * 
sublime.     There  is  no  instance  in  literature  of 
a  nation  going  back  from  laughter  to  heroics. 
The  two  may  exist  side  by  side.     But  that  is  not 
the  case  in  America.     Up  to  this  hour  only  one 
class  of  transatlantic  writers  has  challenged  the 
attention  of  Europe,  and  that  class  is  humorous  ^     ,   j 
and  profane.     Emerson,   Bryant,  Cooper,  Poe,  I  {   \ 
Hawthorne,   Lowell,   Holmes,   and   Irving  are 
merely  Europeans  born  in  America.    But  Ward, 
Harte,  Twain,  and  Breitmann  are  original  and 
American. 

America  is  undoubtedly  the  literary  promise- 
land  of  the  future.  It  has  done  nothing  up  to 
this.  Its  condition  has  forbidden  it  to  achieve 
anything,  but  great  triumphs  may  be  antici- 
pated from  it.  Crossing  the  Atlantic,  what  do 
we  find  in  the  other  great  branch  of  the  English- 
speaking  race  ?  Religious  publications  head  the 
list  by  a  long  way.  They  have  nothing  to  do  with 
this  subject  save  in  so  far  as  they  are  in  the  line 
of  the  sublime.  All  forms  of  the  Christian  and 
Jewish  creeds  are  sublime.  Looking  at  the 
other  walks  of  literature,  we  find  the  death  sen- 


DECAY  OF  THE  SUBLIME.  125 

tence  of  the  sublime  written  everywhere.  With 
the  exception  of  Mr.  Browning,  here  or  there  we 
have  no  poet  or  dramatist  who  attempts  it.  We 
have  elegant  trifles  and  beautiful  form  in  many 
volumes  of  second-rate  contemporary  verse. 
There  never  was  a  time  when  the  science  of 
poetry  was  understood  until  now.  Our  critics 
can  tell  you  with  mathematical  certainty  the 
number  of  poems  as  distinguished  from  pieces 
of  verse  every  well-known  man  has  written. 
But  we  are  not  producing  any  great  poetry,  and 
none  of  the  sublime  kind.  This  is  the  age  of 
elegant  poetic  incentive,  of  exquisite  culture, 
but  it  is  too  dainty.  We  do  not  rise  much 
above  a  poem  to  a  shoe,  or  an  ode  to  a  ringlet, 
perfumed  with  one  of  Mr.  Famiuel's  best  ad- 
mired distillations.  We  have  a  few  poets  who 
are  continually  trying  to  find  out  who  or  what 
the  deuce  they  are,  and  what  they  meant  by 
being  born,  and  so  on ;  but  then  these  men  are 
for  the  eclectic,  and  not  the  herd  of  sensible 
people.  We  have  two  men  who  have  done 
noble  work,  Browning  and  Tennyson;  but, 

speaking  broadly,  we  find  the  sublime  nowhere. 
9 


126  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

It  is  true  you  cannot  force  genius  as  you  force 
asparagus ;  and  these  remarks  are  not  intended 
to  indict  the  age  with  having  no  poetic  faculty 
or  aspiration.  Abundance  of  poetry  of  a  new 
and  beautiful  kind  does  exist,  but  it  is  not  of 
the  lofty  kind  born  to  the  men  of  old. 

Turning  eyes  away  from  literature,  take  a  few 
more  of  the  arts.  Before  we  go  farther,  let  us 
admit  that  one  art  at  least  never  reached  sub- 
limer  recorded  heights  than  to-day.  The  music 
of  the  generation  just  past  is,  I  believe,  in  the 
Iront  rank  of  the  art.  It  is  an  art  now  in  the  throes 
of  an  enormous  transformation.  Not  using  the 
phrase  in  its  slangy  meaning,  the  music  of  the 
future  is  sure  to  touch  splendours  never  dreamed 
of  by  that  Raphael  of  the  lyre,  Mozart.  The  only 
art-Titans  now  wrestling  are  the  musicians ;  not 
those  paltry  souls  that  pad  the  poor  words  of 
inane  burlesques,  but  the  great  spirits  that  sit 
apart,  and  have  audiences  of  the  acgels.  These 
men,  out  of  their  own  mouths,  assure  us  that 
they  catch  the  far-off  murmurs  of  such  imperial 
tones  as  never  filled  the  ear  of  man  yet.  They 
cannot  gather  up  the  broken  chords  they  hear. 


DECAY  OF  THE  SUBLIME.  127 

They  admit  they  have  heard  no  more  than  a  few 
bars  of  the  great  masters  who  are  close  upon  us ; 
but,  they  say,  if  they  only  reproduce  the  effect 
these  preluding  passages  have  upon  them/'  Such 
harmonious  madness  from  their  lips  would  flow, 
the  world  should  listen  then  as  they  are  listen- 
ing now." 

Go  to  the  Koyal  Academy  and  look  round 
you.  How  pretty  !  How  nice  !  How  pathetic  ! 
But  would  you  like  to  lend  your  arm  to  Michael 
Angelo,  and  go  round  those  walls  with  him? 
He  would  prefer  the  rack,  the  gridiron  of  St. 
Laurence.  It  is  true  there  is  no  necessity  for 
the  sublime  ;  but  those  men  who  have  beenMn 
the  awful  presence  of  such  dreams  as  Niglit 
and  Morning,  by  that  sculptor,  must  be  par- 
doned if  they  prefer  it  to  the  art  you  find 
in  Burlington  House.  One  of  our  great 
English  poets  said,  speaking  of  the  trivial 
nature  of  conversation  at  the  beginning  of  this 
century,  that  if  Lord  Bacon  were  alive  now,  and 
made  a  remark  in  an  ordinary  assembly,  con- 
versation would  stop.  If  casts  of  Night  and 
Morning  were  placed  at  the  head  of  the 


128  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

staircase  of  Burlington  House,  no  one  with 
appreciation  of  art  would  enter  the  rooms; 
the  strong  would  linger  for  ever  round 
those  stupendous  groups,  and  the  feeble  would 
be  frighted  away.  Of  course,  the  vast  crowd  of 
art-patrons  would  pass  the  group  with  only  a 
casual  glance,  and  a  protest  against  having 
plaster  casts  occupying  ground  which  ought  to 
be  allotted  to  original  work. 

Read  any  speech  Burke  or  Grattan  ever 
spoke,  and  then  your  Times  and  the  debate 
last  night.  How  plain  it  becomes  that  from 
no  art  has  the  sublime  so  completely  vanished 
as  the  orator's.  Take  those  two  speakers  above, 
and  run  your  eye  over  Cicero  and  Demosthenes, 
the  four  are  of  the  one  school,  in  the  great  style. 
Theirs  is  the  large  and  universal  eloquence. 
It  is  as  fresh  and  beautiful,  as  pathetic,  as 
sublime  now  as  when  uttered,  although  the 
occasions  and  circumstances  are  no  longer  of 
interest  to  man.  The  statistican  and  the  pol- 
troon and  the  verbatim  reporter  have  killed  the 
orator.  If  any  man  were  to  rise  in  the  House 
and  make  a  speech  in  the  manner  of  the 


DECAY  OF  THE  SUBLIME.  129 

ancients,  the  honourable  members  would  hurry 
in  from  all  sides  to  laugh.  A  few  sessions  ago 
a  member  rose  in  his  place,  and  delivered  an 
oration  on  a  subject  not  popular  with  the  House, 
but  in  a  manner  which  echoed  the  grand  old 
style.  At  once  every  seat  for  which  there  was 
a  member  present  at  the  time  was  occupied  ; 
and  the  next  morning  the  daily  papers  had 
articles  which,  while  disposing  of  the  speaker's 
cause  in  a  few  lines,  devoted  columns  to  the 
manner  in  which  he  had  pleaded  it, 

To  discover  what  has  led  to  the  decay  of 
the  sublime  is  not  difficult,  and  even  in  an 
ignorant  essay  like  this,  it  may  be  briefly 
indicated.  Roughly  speaking,  it  is  attri- 
butable to  the  accumulation  of  certainties. 
Any  handbook  that  cribs  from  Longinus  or 
Burke  will  tell  you  the  vague  is  essential  to 
the  sublime.  To  attain  it  there  must  be  some- 
thing half  understood — not  fully  known,  only 
partly  revealed.  To  attain  it  detail  must  be 
lost,  and  only  a  totality  presented  co  the  mind. 
For  instance,  if  a  great  lover  of  Roman  history 
were  suddenly  to  find  himself  on  the  top  of  the 


130  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

Coliseum,  the  most  sublime  result  to  be  ob- 
tained from  the  situation  would  be  produced 
by  repeating  to  himself  the  simple  words,  "  This 
is  Rome."  By  these  words  the  totality  of  the 
city's  grandeur,  influence,  power,  and  enterprises 
would  be  vaguely  presented  to  a  scholar's  mind 
dim  in  the  glow  of  a  multitude  of  half-revealing 
side-lights.  If  a  companion  whispered  in  the 
scholar's  ears,  "  This  place  would  at  one  time 
seat  a  hundred  thousand  people/'  then  the 
particular  is  reached,  and  the  sublime  vanishes 
like  sunshine  against  a  cloud.  Most  of  Nortli 
America  has  been  explored.  Africa  and 
Australia  have  been  traversed.  The  source  of 
the  Nile  has  been  found.  We  can  read  the 
hieroglyphics.  We  know  the  elements  now 
flaming  in  the  sun.  Many  of  the  phenomena 
in  all  branches  of  physiology  which  were 
mysteries  to  our  fathers  are  familiar  common- 
places of  knowledge  now.  We  have  learned 
to  foretell  the  weather.  We  travel  a  thousand 
miles  for  the  hundred  travelled  by  our  fathers. 
We  have  daily  newspapers  to  discuss  all  matters, 
clear  away  mysteries.  We  have  opened  the 


DECAY  OF  THE  SUBLIME.  131 

grave  for  the  sublime  with  the  plough  of 
progress.  Though  the  words  stick  in  my 
throat,  I  must,  I  daresay,  cry,  "God  speed 
the  plough!" 


A  BORROWED  POET. 

TWENTY  years  ago  I  borrowed,  and  read  for 
the  first  time,  the  poems  of  James  Clarence 
Mangan.  I  then  lived  in  a  city  containing  not 
one-third  as  many  people  as  yearly  swell  the 
population  of  London.  The  friend  of  whom  I 
borrowed  the  volume  in  1866  is  still  living  in  his 
old  home,  in  the  house  from  which  I  carried  away 
the  book  then.  I  saw  him  last  winter  and  he 
is  almost  as  little  aged  as  the  hills  he  has  fronted 
all  that  time.  I  have  had  in  those  years  as 
many  homes  as  an  Arab  nomad.  He  still  stays 
in  the  old  place,  and  in  the  gray  twilight  of 
dark  summer  mornings  wakes  to  hear  as  of 
yore  the  twitter  of  sparrows  and  the  cawing  of 
rooks  from  the  other  side  of  the  river,  and  the 
hoarse  hooting  of  the  steamboat  hard  by. 


A  BORROWED  POET.  133 

The  volume  of  Mangan  now  by  me  I  borrowed 
of  another  old  friend,  who  passes  most  of  his  day 
within  sight  of  that  familiar  river  not  quite  a 
hundred  yards  from  the  house  of  the  lender  of 
twenty  years  back.  In  the  meantime  I  have 
seen  no  other  copy  of  Mangan. 

This  latest  fact  is  not  much  to  be  wondered  at, 
for  I  am  not  enterprising  in  the  matter  of  books 
— rarely  buy  and  rarely  borrow,  and  have  never 
been  in  the  reading  room  of  the  British  Museum 
in  my  life.  The  book  may  be  common  to  those 
who  know  much  about  books ;  but  I  have  seen 
only  the  two  copies  I  speak  of,  and  these  are  of  the 
same  edition  and  of  American  origin.  I  believe 
a  selection  from  the  poems  was  issued  a  few  years 
ago  in  Dublin,  but  a  copy  has  not  drifted  my 
way.  The  title-page  of  the  volume  before  me  is 
missing,  but  in  a  list  of  publications  at  the  back 
I  find  "  The  Poems  of  James  Clarence  Mangan. 
Containing  German  Anthology,  Irish  Anthology, 
Apocrypha,  and  Miscellaneous  Poems.  With  a 
Biographical  and  Critical  Introduction,  by  John 
Mitchel.  1  vol.  12mo.  Printed  6n  tinted  and 
calendered  paper.  Nearly  500  pages.  $1." 


134  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

Beyond  all  doubt  this  is  the  book,  and  it  was 
published  by  Mr.  P.  M.  Haverty,  of  New  York. 

As  far  as  I  know,  this  is  the  only  edition  of 
Mangan  which  pretends  to  be  even  comprehen- 
sive. It  does  not  lay  claim  to  completeness. 
At  the  time  the  late  John  Mitchel  wrote  his 
introduction  he  was  aware  of  but  one  other 
edition  of  Mangan's  poems — the  German  Antho- 
logy, published  in  Dublin  many  years  ago.  I 
am  nearly  sure  that  since  the  appearance  of 
Mitchel' s  edition  there  have  been  no  verses  of 
Mangan's  published  in  book  form  on  this  side 
of  the  Atlantic,  except  the  selections  I  have 
already  mentioned,  and  I  do  not  think  any 
edition  whatever  has  been  published  in  this 
country. 

During  the  twenty  years  which  have  elapsed 
since  first  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  poems 
of  James  Clarence  Mangan,  I  have  read  much 
verse  and  many  criticisms  of  verse,  and  yet  I 
don't  remember  to  have  seen  one  line  about 
Mangan  in  any  publication  issued  in  England. 
I  believe  two  magazine  articles  have  appeared, 
but  I  never  saw  them.  Almost  during  these 


A  BORROWED  POET.  135 

years,  or  within  a  period  which  does  not  extend 
back  far  beyond  them,  criticism  of  verse  has 
ceased  to  be  a  matter  of  personal  opinion,  and 
has  been  elevated  or  degraded,  as  you  will,  into 
an  exact  science.  The  opinions  of  old  reviewers 
— the  Jeffreys  and  Broughams — are  now  looked 
on  as  curiosities  of  literature.  There  is  as  wide 
a  gulf  between  the  mode  of  treating  poetry  now 
and  eighty  years  ago  as  there  is  between  the 
mode  of  travelling,  or  the  guess-work  that 
makes  up  the  physician's  art;  and  if  in  a 
gathering  of  literary  experts  any  one  were  now 
to  apply  to  a  new  bard  the  dogmas  of  criticism 
quoted  for  or  against  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats,  and 
the  Lakers  in  their  time,  a  silence  the  reverse 
of  respectful  would  certainly  follow. 

This  is  not  the  age  of  great  poetry,  but  it  is 
the  age  of "  poetical  poetry,"  to  quote  the  phrase 
of  one  of  the  finest  critics  using  the  English  lan- 
guage— one  who  has,  unfortunately  for  the  cul- 
ture of  that  tongue  and  those  who  use  it,  written 
lamentably  little.  The  great  danger  by  which  we 
stand  menaced  at  present  is,  that  our  percep- 
tions may  become  too  exquisite  and  our  poetry 


136  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

too  intellectual.  This,  anyway,  is  true  of  poetry 
which  may  at  all  claim  to  be  an  expression  of 
thought.  There  are  in  our  time  supreme  formists 
in  small  things,  carvers  of  cameos  and  walnut 
shells,  and  musical  conjurors  who  make  sweet 
melodies  with  richly  vo welled  syllables.  But 
unfortunately  the  tendency  of  the  poetic  men  of 
to-day  is  towards  intellectuality,  and  this  is  a 
humiliating  decay.  In  the  times  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth, when  all  the  poets  were  Shakespeares,  they 
cared  nothing  for  their  intellects.  The  intellec- 
tual side  of  a  poet's  mind  is  an  impertinence 
in  his  art. 

I  do  not  presume  to  say  what  place  e  ;actly 
James  Clarence  llangan  ought  to  occupy  on  the 
greater  roll  of  verse-writers,  and  I  am  not  sure 
that  he  is,  in  the  finest  sense  of  the  phrase,  a 
"  poetical  poet ;"  but  he  is,  at  all  events,  the  most 
poetical  poet  Ireland  has  produced,  when  we 
take  into  account  the  volume  and  quality  of  his 
song.  I  shall  purposely  avoid  any  reference 
to  him  as  a  translator,  except  in  acting  on 
John  Mitchel's  opinion,  and  treating  one  of 
his  "  translations  "  from  the  Arabic  as  an  original 


A  BORROWED  POET. 


137 


poem ;  for  during  his  lifetime  lie  confessed  that 
he  had  passed  off  original  poems  of  his  own  as 
translations ;  and  Mitchel  assures  us  that  Mangan 
did  not  know  Arabic.  As  this  essay  does  not 
profess  to  be  orderly  or  dignified,  or  anything 
more  than  rambling  gossip,  put  into  writing  for 
no  other  reason  than  to  introduce  to  the  reader 
a  few  pieces  of  verse  he  may  not  have  met  before, 
I  cannot  do  better  than  insert  here  the  lines  of 
which  I  am  now  speaking : 

THK  TIME  OF  THE  BARMECIDES. 


"My  eyes  are  filmed,  my  beard  is  grey, 

I  am  bowed  with  the  weight  of  years ; 
I  would  I  were  stretched  in  my  bed  of  clay, 

With  my  long-lost  youth's  compeers  ! 
For  back  to  the  past,  though  the  thought  brings 
woe, 

My  memory  ever  glides — 
To  the  old,  old  time,  long,  long  ago, 

The  time  of  the  Barmecides  ! 
To  the  old,  old  time,  long,  long  ago, 

The  time  of  the  Barmecides. 


*p  B  R  A^; 
TTKM 


138  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


II. 

"Then  youth  was  mine,  and  a  fierce  wild  will, 

And  an  iron  arm  in  war, 
And  a  fleet  foot  high  upon  Islikar's  hill, 

When  the  watch-lights  glimmered  afar, 
And  a  barb  as  fiery  as  any  I  know 

That  Khoord  or  Beddaween  rides, 
Ere  my  friends  lay  low — long,  long  ago, 

In  the  time  of  the  Barmecides  ; 
Ere  my  friends  lay  low — long,  long  ago, 

In  the  time  of  the  Barmecides. 


III. 

U0ne  golden  goblet  illumed  my  board, 

One  silver  dish  was  there ; 
At  hand  my  tried  Karamanian  sword 

Lay  always  bright  and  bare ; 
For  those  were  the  days  when  the  angry  blow 

Supplanted  the  word  that  chides — 
When  hearts  could  glow — long,  long  ago, 

In  the  time  of  the  Barmecides ; 
When  hearts  could  glow — long,  long  ago, 

In  the  time  of  the  Barmecides. 


IV. 

"Through  city  and  desert  my  mates  and  I 
Were  free  to  rove  and  roam, 


A  BORROWED  POET.  139 

Our  diapered  canopy  the  deep  of  the  sky, 

Or  the  roof  of  the  palace  dome. 
Oh,  ours  was  the  vivid  life  to  and  fro, 

Which  only  sloth  derides  : 
Men  spent  Life  so — long,  long  ago, 

In  the  time  of  the  Barmecides ; 
Men  spent  Life  so — long,  long  ago, 

In  the  time  of  the  Barmecides. 


V. 

"I  see  rich  Bagdad  once  again, 

With  its  turrets  of  Moorish  mould, 
And  the  Kalifs  twice  five  hundred  men 

Whose  binishes  flamed  with  gold. 
I  call  up  many  a  gorgeous  show 

Which  the  Pall  of  Oblivion  hides — 
All  passed  like  snow,  long,  long  ago, 

With  the  time  of  the  Barmecides  ; 
All  passed  like  snow,  long,  long  ago, 

With  the  time  of  the  Barmecides. 


"But  mine  eye  is  dim,  and  my  beard  is  grey, 

And  I  bend  with  the  weight  of  years — 
May  I  soon  go  down  to  the  House  of  Clay, 
Where  slumber  my  Youth's  compeers ! 


140  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

For  with  them  and  the  Past,  though  the  thought 
wakes  woe, 

My  memory  ever  abides, 
And  I  mourn  for  the  Times  gone  long  ago, 

For  the  Times  of  the  Barmecides  ! 
I  mourn  for  the  Times  gone  long  ago, 

For  the  Times  of  the  Barmecides ! n 


This  is  the  poem  claimed  by  Mangan  to  be 
from  the  Arabic.  I  have  no  means  of  knowing 
whether  it  is  or  not.  There  is  one  translation 
from  the  Persian,  one  from  the  Ottoman,  and 
acccording  to  Mitchel,  one  from  the  Coptic. 
But  seeing  that  he  turned  into  verse  a  great 
number  of  Irish  poems  from  prose  translations 
done  by  another,  and  that  he  did  not  know  a 
word  of  that  language,  I  think  it  may  be  safely 
assumed  that  The  Last  of  the  Barmecides  is 
original.  This  poem  is  so  old  a  favourite  of 
mine  that  I  cannot  pretend  to  be  an  impartial 
judge  of  it.  When  I  hear  it  (I  can  never  see  a 
poem  I  know  well  and  love  much)  I  listen  as 
to  the  unchanged  voice  of  an  old  friend;  I 
wander  in  a  maze  of  memories ;  "  I  see  rich 
Bagdad  once  again  ; "  I  am  once  more  owner  of 


A  BORROWED  POET.  141 

the  magic  carpet,  and  am  floating  irresponsibly 
and  at  will  on  the  intoxicating  atmosphere  of 
the  poets  over  the  enchanted  groves,  and 
streams,  and  hills,  and  seas  of  fairyland,  or 
barkening  to  voices  that  years  ago  ceased  to 
stir  in  my  ears,  gazing  at  the  faces  that  have 
long  since  moulded  the  face  cloth  into  blunted 
memories  of  the  face  for  the  grave. 

On  the  20th  of  June,  1849,  Mangan  died 
in  the  Meath  Hospital,  Dublin.  Having  been 
born  in  1803,  he  was,  in  1849,  eight  years 
older  than  Poe,  who  died  destitute  and  forlorn 
at  Baltimore  in  the  same  year.  Both  poets 
had  been  in  abject  poverty,  both  had  been 
unfortunate  in  love,  both  had  been  consummate 
artists,  both  had  been  piteously  unlucky  in  a 
thousand  ways,  and  both  had  died  the  same  year, 
and  in  common  hospitals.  Two  more  miserable 
stories  it  is  impossible  to  find  anywhere.  I 
would  recommend  those  of  sensitive  natures  to 
confine  their  reading  to  the  work  these  men 
did,  and  not  to  the  misfortunes  they  laboured 
under,  and  the  follies  they  committed.  I  think, 

of  the  two,  Mangan  suffered  more  acutely ;   for 
10 


142  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

he  never  rose  up  in  anger  against  the  world, 
or  those  around  him,  but  glided  like  an 
uncomplaining  ghost  into  the  grave,  where, 
long  before  his  death,  all  his  hopes  lay  buried. 
He  had  only  a  half-hearted  pity  for  himself. 
Poe,  in  his  Haven,  is,  all  the  time  of  his  most 
pathetic  and  terrible  complaining,  conscious 
that  he  complains  as  becomes  a  fine  artist. 
But  the  raven's  croak  does  not  touch  the  heart. 
It  appeals  to  the  intellect ;  it  affects  the  fancy 
the  imagination,  the  ear,  the  eye.  When 
Mangan  opens  his  bosom  and  shows  you  the 
ravens  that  prey  upon  him,  he  cannot  repress 
something  like  a  laugh  at  the  thought  that 
any  one  could  be  interested  in  him  and  his 
woes.  See : 

THE  NAMELESS  ONE. 

BALLAD. 


"  Iloll  forth,  my  song,  like  the  rushing  river, 

That  sweeps  along  to  the  mighty  sea : 
God  will  inspire  me  while  I  deliver 
My  soul  of  thee  ! 


A  BORROWED  POET.  143 


n. 


"  Tell  tliou  tlie  world,  when  my  boiies  lie  whitening 

Amid  the  last  homes  of  youth  and  eld, 
That  there  was  once  one  whose  veins  ran  lightning 
No  eye  beheld. 


III. 


"  Tell  how  his  boyhood  was  one  drear  night-hour, 

How  shone  for  Mm,  through  his  griefs  and  gloom, 
No  star  of  all  heaven  sends  to  light  our 
Path  to  the  tomb. 


IV. 


"  Roll  on,  my  song,  and  to  after  ages 

Tell  how,  disdaining  all  earth  can  give, 
He  would  have  taught  men  from  wisdom's  pages 
The  way  to  live. 


V. 

^  And  tell  how,  trampled,  derided,  hated, 

And  worn  by  weakness,  disease,  and  wrong, 
He  fled  for  shelter  to  God,  who  mated 
His  soul  with  song — 


144  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


YL 

With  song  which  alway,  sublime  or  vapid, 
Flowed  like  a  rill  in  the  morning  beam, 
Perchance  not  deep,  but  intense  and  rapid — 
A  mountain  stream. 


VII. 

"  Tell  how  the  Nameless,  condemned  for  years  long 

To  herd  with  demons  from  hell  beneath, 
Saw  things  that  made  him,  with  groans  and  tears, 
long 

For  even  death. 


VIII. 

Go  on  to  tell  how,  with  genius  wasted, 

Betrayed  in  friendship,  befooled  in  love, 
With  spirit  shipwrecked  and  young  hopes  blasted, 
He  still,  still  strove. 


IX. 

"  Till,  spent  with  toil,  dreeing  death  for  others, 

And  some  whose  hands  should  have  wrought  for 

Mm 

(If  children  live  not  for  sires  and  mothers), 
His  mind  grew  dim. 


A  BOKKOWED  POET.  145 


lAnd  he  fell  far  through  the  pit  abysmal, 

The  gulf  and  grave  of  Maginn  and  Burns, 
And  pawned  his  soul  for  the  devil's  dismal 
Stock  of  returns. 


But  yet  redeemed  it  in  days  of  darkness, 

And  shapes  and  signs  of  the  final  wrath, 
"Where  death  in  hideous  and  ghastly  starkness 
Stood  in  his  path. 


XII. 

"  And  tell  how  now,  amid  wreck  and  sorrow, 

And  want  and  sickness  and  houseless  nights, 
He  bides  in  calmness  the  silent  morrow 
That  no  ray  lights. 


XIII. 

"  And  lives  he  still,  then  ]    Yes  !  old  ard  hoary 

At  thirty-nine,  from  despair  and  woe, 
He  lives  enduring  what  future  story 
Will  never  know. 


146  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


XIV. 

"  Him  grant  a  grave  to,  ye  pitying  noble, 

Deep  in  your  bosoms  !     There  let  him  dwell ! 
lie,  too,  had  tears  for  all  souls  in  trouble, 
Here  and  in  hell/' 


The  burden  of  all  his  song  is  sad,  and  in 
his  translations  he  has  chosen  chiefly  themes 
which  echoed  the  harpings  of  his  own  soul. 
He  began  life  as  a  copying  clerk  in  an 
attorney's  office,  and  had  for  some  time  to 
support  wholly,  or  in  the  main,  a  mother  and 
sister.  In  MitchePs  preface  there  are  many 
passages  almost  as  fine  as  the  verse  of  the  poet. 
Here  is  one,  long  as  it  is,  that  must  find  a  place. 
Mitchel  is  speaking  of  the  days  when  Mangan 
was  in  the  attorney's  office  : — 

"  At  what  age  he  devoted  himself  to  this  drudgery,  at 
what  age  he  left  it,  or  was  discharged  from  it,  does  not 
appear  ;  for  his  whole  biography  documents  are  wanting, 
the  man  having  never,  for  one  moment,  imagined  that  his 
poor  life  could  interest  any  surviving  human  being,  and 
having  never,  accordingly,  collected  his  biographical 
assets,  and  appointed  a  literary  executor  to  take  care  of 
his  posthumous  fame.  Neither  did  he  ever  acquire  the 


A  BORROWED  POET.  147 

habit,  common  enough  among  literary  men,  of  dwelling 
upon  his  own  early  trials,  struggles,  and  triumphs.  But 
those  who  knew  him  in  after  years  can  remember  with 
what  a  shuddering  and  loathing  horror  he  spoke — when 
at  rare  intervals  he  could  be  induced  to  speak  at  all — of 
his  labours  with  the  scrivener  and  attorney.  He  was 
shy  and  sensitive,  with  exquisite  sensibilities  and  fine 
impulses  ;  eye,  ear,  and  soul  open  to  all  the  beauty, 
music,  and  glory  of  heaven  and  earth  ;  humble,  gent'le, 
and  unexacting  ;  modestly  craving  nothing  in  the  world 
but  celestial,  glorified  life,  seraphic  love,  and  a  throne 
among  the  immortal  gods  (that's  all) ;  and  he  was  eight 
or  ten  years  scribbling  deeds,  pleadings,  and  bills  in 
Chancery." 

There  is,  I  believe,  but  one  portrait  of  him  in 
existence,  and  a  copy  of  it  hangs  on  the  wall  of 
the  room  in  which  I  am  writing,  a  few  feet  in 
front  of  my  eyes.  It  is  not  a  face  easy  to 
describe.  Beauty  is  the  chief  characteristic  of 
it.  But  it  is  not  the  beauty  that  men  admire 
or  that  inspires  love  in  women.  It  is  not  the 
face  of  a  poet  or  a  visionary  or  a  thinker. 
There  is  no  passion  in  it ;  not  even  the 
passionate  sadness  of  his  own  verse.  It  is  not 
the  face  of  a  man  who  has  suffered  greatly, 
or  rejoiced  in  ecstasy.  It  is  the  face  of  a 


148  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

fleshless,  worn  man  of  forty,  with  hair  pressed 
back  from  the  forehead  and  ear.  I  have  been 
looking  at  it  for  a  long  time,  trying  to  find  out 
something  positive  about  it,  and  I  have  failed. 
It  is  not  interesting.  It  is  the  face  of  a  man 
who  is  done  with  the  world  and  humanity.  It 
is  the  face  of  a  dead  man  whose  spirit  has 
passed  away,  while  the  body  remains  alive. 
The  eyes  are  open,  and  have  light  in  them ;  the 
face  would  be  more  complete  if  the  light  were 
out,  and  the  lids  drawn  down  and  composed 
for  the  blind  tomb. 

He  gives  a  picture  of  his  mental  attitude  at 
about  the  time  this  portrait  was  taken  : — 

TWENTY  GOLDEN  YEARS  AGO. 

I. 

"  Oh,  the  rain,  the  weary,  dreary  rain, 

How  it  plashes  on  the  window-sill ! 
Night,  I  guess  too,  must  be  on  the  wane, 

Strass  and  Gass  around  are  grown  so  still 
Here  I  sit  with  coffee  in  my  cup — 

Ah,  'twas  rarely  I  beheld  it  flow 
In  the  tavern  where  I  loved  to  sup 

Twenty  golden  years  ago  ! 


A  BORROWED  POET.  149 

ii. 

*;  Twenty  years  ago,  alas  !— but  stay — 

On  my  life,  'tis  half-past  twelve  o'clock  1 
After  all,  the  hours  do  slip  away — 

Come,  here  goes  to  burn  another  block  J 
For  the  night,  or  morn,  is  wet  and  cold  5 

And  my  fire  is  dwindling  rather  low : 
I  had  fire  enough,  when  young  and  bold 

Twenty  golden  years  ago. 

in. 

u  Dear  !  I  don't  feel  well  at  all,  somehow  : 

Few  in  Weimar  dream  how  bad  I  am  ; 
Floods  of  tears  grow  common  with  me  now, 

High-Dutch  floods  that  Reason  cannot  dam. 
Doctors  think  I'll  neither  live  nor  thrive 

If  I  mope  at  home  so — I  don't  know — • 
Am  I  living  now  ?    I  was  alive 

Twenty  golden  years  ago. 

IV. 

u  Wifeless,  friendless,  flagonless,  alone, 

Not  quite  bookless,  though,  unless  I  choose  $ 
Left  with  naught  to  do,  except  to  groan, 

Not  a  soul  to  woo,  except  the  Muse. 
Oh,  this  is  hard  for  me  to  bear — 

Me  who  whilom  lived  so  much  en  Jiaut — 
Me  who  broke  all  hearts  like  china-ware, 

Twenty  golden  years  ago. 


150  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


v. 

*'  Perhaps  'tis  better  ; — time's  defacing  waves 

Long  have  quenched  the  radiance  of  my  brow—- 
They  who  curse  me  nightly  from  their  graves 

Scarce  could  love  me  were  they  living  now ; 
But  my  loneliness  hath  darker  ills — 

Such  dun  duns  as  Conscience,  Thought,  &  Co., 
Awful  Gorgons  !     Worse  than  tailors'  bills 

Twenty  golden  years  ago. 

YI. 

"Did  I  paint  a  fifth  of  what  I  feel, 

Oh,  how  plaintive  you  would  ween  I  was  ! 
But  I  won't,  albeit  I  have  a  deal 

More  to  wail  about  than  Kerner  has  ! 
Kernels  tears  are  wept  for  withered  flowers ; 

Mine  for  withered  hopes  ;  my  scroll  of  woe 
Dates,  alas  !  from  youth's  deserted  bowers, 

Twenty  golden  years  ago. 

VII. 

u  Yet,  may  Deutschland's  bardlings  flourish  long  ! 

Me,  I  tweak  no  beak  among  them  ; — hawks 
Must  not  pounce  on  hawks  :  besides,  in  song 

I  could  once  beat  all  of  them  by  chalks. 
Though  you  find  me,  as  I  near  my  goal, 

Sentimentalising  like  Rousseau, 
Oh,  I  had  a  great  Byronian  soul 

Twenty  golden  years  ago  ! 


A  BORROWED  POET.  151 


VIII. 

u  Tick-tick,  tick-tick  ! — not  a  sound  save  Time's, 

And  the  wind  gust  as  it  drives  the  rain- 
Tortured  torturer  of  reluctant  rhymes, 

Go  to  bed  and  rest  thine  aching  brain  ! 
Sleep  ! — no  more  the  dupe  of  hopes  or  schemes ; 

Soon  thou  sleepest  where  the  thistles  blow ; 
Curious  anti-climax  to  thy  dreams 

Twenty  golden  years  ago  ! " 

I  find  myself  now  in  a  great  puzzle.  I  want, 
first  of  all,  to  say  I  think  it  most  melancholy 
that  Mangan,  when  of  full  age  and  judgment, 
should  have  thought  Byron  had  "a  great 
Byronian  soul."  Observe,  he  does  not  mean 
that  he  had  a  soul  greatly  like  Byron's,  but  thai 
he  had  a  soul  like  the  great  soul  of  Byron.  I 
do  not  believe  Byron  had  a  great  soul  at  all.  I 
believe  he  was  simply  a  fine  stage-manager  of 
melodrama,  the  finest  that  ever  lived,  and  that 
as  a  property-master  he  was  unrivalled ;  but 
that  to  please  no  one,  himself  included,  could 
he  have  written  the  play.  I  am  not  descending 
to  so  defiling  a  depth  as  to  talk  about  plagiarism. 
What  I  wish  to  say  is,  that  whether  Byron  stole 


152  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

or  not  made  not  the  least  difference  in  the  world, 
for  he  never  by  the  aid  of  his  gifts  or  his  thefts 
wrote  a  poem.  I  wanted  further  to  say  of  Byron 
that  there  was  nothing  great  about  him  except 
his  vanity.  Suddenly  I  remembered  some  words 
of  the  critic  of  whom  I  spoke  a  while  back,  in 
dealing  with  the  question  of  poetical  poetry  and 
poems.  I  took  down  the  printed  page,  where  I 
found  these  lines : — 

"  Mr.  Swinburne's  poetry  is  almost  altogether  poetical. 
Not  all  the  poetry  of  even  the  Poets  is  so,  and  to  one 
who  loves  this  dear  and  intimate  quality  of  which  we 
speak,  Coleridge,  for  instance,  is  a  poet  of  some  four 
poems,  Wordsworth  of  some  sixteen,  Keats  of  five,  Byron 
of  none,  though  Byron  is  great  and  eloquent,  but  the 
thing  we  prize  so  much  is  far  away  from  eloquence. 
Poetical  poetry  is  the  inner  garden ;  there  grows  the 
*  flower  of  the  mind.' n 

Now,  my  difficulty  is  plain.  My  critic,  who 
is  also  a  poet,  says  Byron  is  great,  and  I  find 
fault  with  Mangan  for  saying  Byron  had  a  great 
Byronian  soul.  Here  are  two  of  my  select 
authors  against  me.  Plainly,  the  best  thing  I 
can  do  is  say  nothing  at  all  about  the  matter  I 


A  BORROWED  POET.  153 

Twenty  Golden  Years  Ago  is  by  no  means 
a  poetical  poem,  but  there  is  poetry  in  it. 
There  is  no  poetical  poem  by  Mangan.  But 
he  has  written  no  serious  verses  in  which 
there  is  not  poetry. 

After  giving  Mangan's  own  verse  account  of 
what  he  was  like  in  his  own  regard  at  about 
forty  years  of  age,  I  copy  what  Mitchel  saw 
when  the  poet  was  first  pointed  out  to  him : — 


u  Being  in  the  College  Library  [Trinity,  Dublin],  and 
having  occasion  for  a  book  in  that  gloomy  apartment  of 
the  institution  called  the  '  Fagal  Library/  which  is  the 
innermost  recess  of  the  stately  building,  an  acquaintance 
pointed  out  to  me  a  man  perched  on  the  top  of  a  ladder, 
with  the  whispered  information  that  the  figure  was 
Clarence  Mangan.  It  was  an  unearthly  and  ghostly 
figure,  in  a  brown  garment ;  the  same  garment  (to  all 
appearance),  which  lasted  till  the  day  of  his  death. 
The  blanched  hair  was  totally  unkempt ;  the  corpse- 
like  features  still  as  marble  ;  a  large  book  was  in  his 
arms,  and  all  his  soul  was  in  the  book.  I  had  never 
heard  of  Clarence  Mangan  before,  and  knew  not  for  what 
he  was  celebrated,  whether  as  a  magician,  a  poet,  or  a 
murderer  ;  yet  took  a  volume  and  spread  it  on  a  table, 
not  to  read,  but  with  the  pretence  of  reading  to  gaze  on 
the  spectral  creature  on  the  ladder." 


154  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


I  never  met  any  one  who  had  known  Mangan. 
Mitch  el  did  not  know  the  name  of  the  woman 
who  lured  him  on  with  smiles  that  seemed  to 
promise  love.  He  always  addressed  her  in  his 
poems  as  Frances.  Some  time  ago  the  name 
of  the  woman  was  divulged.  It  is  ungallant 
of  me  to  have  forgotten  it,  but  such  is  the  case. 
The  address  at  which  Mangan  visited  her  was 
in  Mountpleasant  Square,  Dublin.  At  the  time 
I  saw  the  name  of  the  lady  I  looked  into  a 
directory  of  1848  which  I  happened  to  have  by 
me,  and  found  a  different  name  at  the  address 
given  in  the  Square.  I  know  the  love  affair  of 
the  poet  took  place  years  before  his  death  in 
1849,  but  people  in  quiet  and  unpretentious 
houses  in  Dublin,  or  correctly  Ranelagh,  often 
live  a  whole  generation  in  the  same  house. 

Here  I  find  myself  in  a  second  puzzle.  So 
long  as  I  thought  merely  of  writing  this  rambling 
account  of  "  My  Borrowed  Poet,"  I  decided  upon 
trying  to  say  something  about  the  stupidity  of 
women  and  poets  in  general.  But  I  don't  feel 
in  case  to  do  so  when  I  glance  up  at  the 
face  of  Mangan  hanging  on  the  wall,  and  bring 


A  BORROWED  POET.  155 

myself  to  realise  the  fact  that  this  face  now 
looking  so  dead  and  unburied  was  young  and 
bright  and  perhaps  cheerful  when  he  went 
wooing  in  Ranelagh. 

Instead  of  saying  anything  wise  and  stupid 
and  commonplace  about  either  poets  or  women, 
let  me  quote  here  stanzas  which  must  have  been 
written  some  day  when  he  saw  sunshine  among 
the  clouds : — 


THE  MARINER'S  BRIDE. 

'  Look,  mother  !  the  mariner's  rowing 

His  galley  adown  the  tide  ; 
111  go  where  the  mariner's  going, 
And  be  the  mariner's  bride ! 


•'  I  saw  him  one  day  through  the  wicket, 
I  opened  the  gate  and  we  met — 
As  a  bird  in  the  fowler's  net, 

Was  I  caught  in  my  own  green  thicket. 

0  mother,  my  tears  are  flowing, 
I've  lost  my  maidenly  pride — 

111  go  if  the  mariner's  going, 
And  be  the  mariner's  bride ! 


156  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

"  This  Love  the  tyrant  evinces, 

Alas  !  an  omnipotent  might, 
He  darkens  the  mind  like  night, 

He  treads  on  the  necks  of  Princes  2 
O  mother,  my  bosom  is  glowing, 

I'll  go  whatever  betide, 
I'll  go  where  the  mariner's  going, 

And  be  the  mariner's  bride  1 

"  Yes,  mother  !  the  spoiler  has  reft  me 

Of  reason  and  self-control ; 

Gone,  gone  is  my  wretched  soul, 
And  only  my  body  is  left  me  ! 
The  winds,  0  mother,  are  blowing, 

The  ocean  is  bright  and  wide ; 
I'll  go  where  the  mariner's  going, 

And  be  the  mariner's  bride." 

This  appears  among  the  Apocrypha,  and  is 
credited  by  Mangan  to  the  "  Spanish ; "  but  it 
is  safe  to  assume  when  he  is  so  vague  that 
the  poem  is  original.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
bright  and  cheerful  he  has  given  us.  The  only 
touch  of  sorrow  we  feel  is  for  the  poor  mother 
who  is  about  to  lose  so  impulsive  and  vivacious 
a  daughter.  The  time  of  this  delightful  ballad 
is  not  clearly  defined,  but  we  may  be  absolutely 


A  BORROWED  POET.  157 

certain  that  we  of  this  moribund  nineteenth 
century  will  never  meet  except  at  a  function  of 
a  recondite  spiritual  medium  even  the  great 
grandchild  of  the  Mariner's  Bride.  How  much 
more  is  our  devout  gratitude  due  to  a  good  and 
pious  spiritualist  than  to  any  riotous  and 
licentious  poet !  The  former  can  give  us  inter- 
course with  the  illustrious  defunct  of  history; 
the  latter  can  give  us  no  more  than  the  image 
of  a  figment,  the  phantom  of  a  shade,  the  echo 
of  sounds  that  never  vibrated  in  the  ear  of 
man.  All  persons  who  believe  the  evidence 
adduced  by  poets  are  the  victims  of  subornation. 
A  saw-mill  does  not  seem  a  good  subject  for 
a  "  copy  of  verses."  llangan  died  single  and 
in  poverty,  and  was  buried  by  his  friends. 
Listen : — 

THE    SAW-MILL. 

u  My  path  lay  towards  the  Mourne  again, 
But  I  stopped  to  rest  by  the  hill-side 
That  glanced  adown  o'er  the  sunken  glen 
Which  the  Saw-  and  Water-mills  hide, 
Which  now,  as  then, 

The  Saw-  and  Water-mills  hide. 
11 


158  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

"  And  there,  as  I  lay  reclined  on  the  hill, 
Like  a  man  made  by  sudden  qualm  ill, 
I  heard  the  water  in  the  Water-mill, 
And  I  saw  the  saw  in  the  Saw-mill ! 

As  I  thus  lay  still 
I  saw  the  saw  in  the  Saw-mill ! 


"  The  saw,  the  breeze,  and  the  humming  bees, 

Lulled  me  into  a  dreamy  reverie, 
Till  the  objects  round  me — hills,  mills,  trees3 
Seemed  grown  alive  all  and  every — 

By  slow  degrees 
Took  life  as  it  were,  all  and  every  J 

"  Anon  the  sound  of  the  waters  grew 

To  a  Mourne-ful  ditty, 
And  the  song  of  the  tree  that  the  saw  sawed 

through 
Disturbed  my  spirit  with  pity, 

Began  to  subdue 
My  spirit  with  tenderest  pity  J 


"  *  Oh,  wanderer,  the  hour  that  brings  thee  back 

Is  of  all  meet  hours  the  meetest. 
Thou  now,  in  sooth  art  on  the  Track, 
And  nigher  to  Home  than  thou  weetest ; 
Thou  hast  thought  Time  slack. 
But  his  flight  has  been  of  the  fleetest ! 


A  BORROWED  POET.  159 

"  '  For  this  it  is  that  I  dree  such  pain 

As,  when  wounded,  even  a  plank  will  ; 
My  bosom  is  pierced,  is  rent  in  twain, 
That  thine  may  ever  bide  tranquil. 

May  ever  remain 
Henceforward  untroubled  and  tranquil. 

"  '  In  a  few  days  more,  most  Lonely  One  ! 

Shall  I,  as  a  narrow  ark,  veil 
Thine  eyes  from  the  glare  of  the  world  and  sun 
'Mong  the  urns  of  yonder  dark  vale  — 

In  the  cold  and  dun 
Recesses  of  yonder  dark  vale  ! 

"  *  For  this  grieve  not  !    Thou  knowest  what  thanks 

The  Weary-souled  and  Meek  owe 
To  Death  !  '     I  awoke,  and  heard  four  planks 
Fall  down  with  a  saddening  echo. 

/  heard  four  planks 
Fall  down  with  a  hollow  echo? 


This  was  the  epithalamium  of  James  Clarence 
Siangan  sung  by  himself. 


THE  ENGLISH  OPIUM-EATER. 

I  BOUGHT  my  copy  new  for  fourpence-half- 
penny,  in  Holywell  Street.  It  was  published 
by  George  Routledge  and  Sons,  of  the  Broadway, 
London.  The  little  volume  is  made  up  of  a 
"Preface,"  by  Thomas  de  Quincey;  " Confes- 
sions of  an  English  Opium-eater ;"  and  "  Notes 
from  the  Pocket-book  of  a  late  Opium-eater /' 
including  "  Walking  Stewart/7  "  On  the  Knock- 
ing at  the  Gates  in  Macbeth"  and  "  On  Suicide/' 
When  it  last  left  my  hands  it  boasted  a 
paper  cover,  on  which  appeared  the  head  of  the 
illustrious  Laker.  At  my  elbow  now  it  lies, 
divested  of  its  shield ;  and  I  sit  face  to  face 
with  the  title-page,  as  though  my  author  had 
taken  off  his  hat  and  overcoat,  and  I  were  ask- 
ing him  which  he  preferred,  clear  or  thick  soup, 
while  the  servant  stood  behind  filling  his  glass 


THE  ENGLISH  OPIUM-EATER.          101 

with  Amontillado.  How  that  cover  came  to  be 
removed  I  do  not  know.  The  last  borrower  was 
of  the  less  destructive  sex,  and  I  am  at  a  great 
loss  to  account  for  the  injury. 

I  object  to  the  presence  of  "  Walking 
Stewart,"  and  "  On  Suicide/'  otherwise  I  count 
my  copy  perfect.  With  the  exception  of  Robin- 
son Crusoe  and  Poe's  Tales  I  have  read  nothing 
so  often  as  the  Opium-eater.  Only  twice  in  my 
life  up  to  five-and-twenty  years  of  age  did  I  sit 
up  all  night  to  read  a  book :  once  when  about 
midnight  I  came  into  possession  of  Enoch  Ardeny 
and  a  second  time  when,  at  the  same  witching 
hour  I  drew  a  red  cloth-bound  edition  of  the 
Opium-eater  out  of  my  pocket,  in  my  lonely, 
dreary  bedroom,  five  hundred  miles  from  where 
I  am  now  writing.  The  household  were  all 
asleep,  and  I  by  no  means  strong  of  nerve. 
The  room  was  large,  the  dwelling  ghostly.  I 
sat  in  an  embrasure  of  one  of  the  windows, 
with  a  little  table  supporting  the  candles  on  one 
side,  and  on  the  other  a  small  movable  book- 
case. Thus  I  was  in  a  kind  of  dock,  only  open 
on  one  side,  that  fronting  the  room.  It  was  in 


162  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

the  beginning  of  autumn,  and  a  low,  warm 
wind  blew  the  complaining  rain  against  the 
pane  on  a  level  with  my  ear.  At  that  time  I 
had  not  seen  London,  and  I  remember  being 
overpowered  and  broken  before  the  spectacle  of 
that  sensitive  and  imaginative  boy  in  the  text, 
hungry  and  forlorn,  in  the  unsympathetic  mass 
of  innumerable  houses,  every  door  of  which  was 
shut  against  him. 

As  I  read  on  and  the  hour  grew  late,  the 
succession  of  splendours  and  terrors  wrought 
on  my  imagination,  until  I  felt  cold  and  ex- 
hausted, and  had  scarcely  strength  to  sit  upright 
in  my  chair.  My  hand  trembled,  and  my  mind 
became  tremulously  apprehensive  of  some- 
thing vague  and  awful ;  I  could  not  tell  what. 
Sounds  of  the  night  which  I  had  heard  a 
thousand  times  before,  which  were  as  familiar 
to  me  as  the  bell  of  my  parish  church,  now 
assumed  dire,  uncertain  imports.  The  rattling  of 
the  sash  was  not  the  work  of  the  wind,  not  the 
work  of  ghostly  hands,  but  worse  still,  of  human 
hands  belonging  to  men  in  some  more  dire  ex- 
tremity than  the  approach  of  death.  The  beat- 


THE  ENGLISH  OPIUM-EATER.  163 

ing  of  the  rain  against  the  glass  was  made  to 
cover  voices  trying  to  tell  me  secrets  I  could 
not  hear  and  live,  and  which  yet  I  would  have 
given  my  life  to  know. 

I  cannot  tell  why  I  was  so  exhilarated  by 
terror.  The  Confessions  alone  are  not  calcu- 
lated to  produce  inexplicable  disturbance  of  the 
mind.  It  may  be  I  had  eaten  little  or  nothing 
that  day ;  it  may  be  I  had  steeped  myself  too 
deeply  in  nicotine.  All  I  know  for  certain 
is  that  I  was  in  such  a  state  of  abject  panic 
I  had  not  courage  to  cross  the  room  to  my 
bed.  It  was  in  the  dreary,  pitiless,  raw  hour 
before  the  dawn  I  finished  the  book.  Then  I 
found  I  durst  not  rise.  I  put  down  the  book 
and  looked  at  the  candles.  They  would  last 
till  daylight. 

I  would  have  given  all  the  world  to  lie  on 
that  bed  over  there,  with  my  back  secure 
against  it,  warmed  by  it,  comforted  by  it.  But 
that  open  space  was  more  terrible  to  me  than 
if  it  were  filled  with  flame.  I  should  have  been 
much  more  at  my  ease  in  the  dark,  yet  I 
could  not  bring  myself  to  blow  out  the  lights; 


164  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

not  because  I  dreaded  the  darkness,  but  because 
I  shrank  from  encountering  the  possibilities  of 
that  awful  moment  of  twilight  between  the  full 
light  of  the  candles  and  the  blank  gloom. 

When  I  thought  of  blowing  out  the  lights  and 
imagined  the  dread  of  catching  a  glimpse  of 
some  spectacle  of  supreme  horror,  I  imprudently 
gave  my  imagination  rein,  and  set  myself  to 
find  out  what  would  terrify  me  most.  All  at 
once,  and  before  I  had  made  more  than  the 
inquiry  of  my  mind,  I  saw  in  fancy  between 
me  and  the  bed,  a  thiiig  of  unapproachable 
terror;  I  had  not  been  recently  reading 
Ckristabel,  and  yet  it  must  have  been  re- 
motely from  that  poem  I  conjured  the  spectre 
which  so  awed  me.  I  placed  out  in  the  open 
of  the  room  on  the  floor,  between  me  and  the 
door,  and  close  to  a  straight  line  drawn  between 
me  and  the  bed,  a  figure  shrouded  in  a  black 
cloak,  from  hidden  shoulder  to  invisible  feet. 
Over  the  head  of  this  figure  was  cast  a  cowl, 
which  completely  concealed  the  head  and  face. 
At  any  moment  the  cloak  might  open  and  dis- 
close the  body  of  that  figure.  I  knew  the  body 


THE  ENGLISH  OPIUM-EATER.  165 

of  that  figure  was  a  "  thing  to  dream  of,  not  to 
see."  I  felt  sure  I  should  lose  my  reason  if 
the  cloak  opened  and  discovered  the  loathsome 
body.  I  had  no  idea  what  I  should  see,  but  I 
knew  I  should  go  mad. 

In  my  dock  by  the  window,  and  with  the 
light  behind  my  eyes  I  felt  secure.  But  at 
that  moment  no  earthly  consideration,  no  con- 
sideration whatever,  would  have  induced  me 
to  face  that  ghostly  form  in  the  flicker  of 
expiring  light.  I  was  not  under  any  de- 
lusion. I  knew  then  as  well  as  I  know  now 
that  there  was  no  object  on  which  the  normal 
human  eye  could  exercise  itself  between  me 
and  the  bed.  I  deliberately  willed  the  figure 
to  appear,  and  although  once  I  had  summoned 
it  I  could  not  dismiss  it,  I  had  complete  and 
self-possessed  knowledge  that  I  saw  nothing 
with  my  physical  eye.  Moreover,  full  of  poten- 
tiality for  terror  as  that  figure  was  in  its  present 
shape  and  attitude,  it  had  no  dread  for  me. 
I  was  fascinated  by  considering  possibilities 
which  I  knew  could  not  arise  so  long  as  the 
present  circumstances  remained  unchanged.  In 


166  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

other  words,  I  knew  I  could  trust  my  reason  to 
keep  my  imagination  in  subjection,  so  long  as 
my  senses  were  not  confused  or  my  attention 
scared.  If  I  attempted  to  extinguish  the 
candles  that  figure  might  waver !  if  I  moved 
across  the  floor  it  might  get  behind  my  back, 
and  as  I  caught  sight  of  it  over  my  shoulder, 
the  cloak  might  fall  aside  !  Then  I  should  go 
mad.  Thus  I  sat  and  waited  until  daylight  came. 
Then  I  fell  asleep  in  my  chair. 

As  I  have  said,  the  copy  of  the  Opium- 
eater  I  then  had  was  bound  in  red  cloth.  It 
was  a  much  handsomer  book  than  the  humble 
one  published  by  Routledge.  Since  that 
memorable  night  many  years  ago  in  my  high, 
dreary,  lonely  bedroom,  I  cannot  tell  you  all  the 
copies  of  the  Opium-eater  which  have  been 
mine.  I  remember  another,  bound  in  dark 
blue  cloth,  with  copious  notes.  There  was  a 
third,  the  outside  seeming  of  which  I  forget, 
but  which  I  think  formed  part  of  two  volumes 
of  selections  from  De  Quincey.  I  love  my  little 
sixpenny  volume  for  one  reason  chiefly.  I  can 
lend  it  without  fear,  and  lose  it  without  a  pang. 


THE  ENGLISH  OPIUM-EATER.          167 

Why,  the  beggarliest  miser  alive  can't  think 
much  of  fourpence -halfpenny  !  I  have  already 
dispensed  a  few  copies  of  the  Opium-eater , 
price  fourpence-halfpenny.  As  it  lies  on  my 
table  now,  I  take  no  more  care  of  it  than  one 
does  of  yesterday's  morning  paper.  When  I 
read  it  I  double  it  back,  to  show  to  myself  how 
little  I  value  the  gross  material  of  the  book. 
Any  one  coming  in  likely  to  appreciate  the 
book,  and  who  has  not  read  it  is  welcome  to 
carry  it  off  as  a  gift.  Yet  if  I  am  free  with  the 
volume,  I  am  jealous  of  the  author.  I  do  not 
mention  his  name  to  people  I  believe  unwilling 
or  unable  to  worship  him  becomingly. 

But  when  I  meet  a  true  disciple  what  prodigal 
joy  environs  and  suffuses  me !  What  talks  of 
him  I  have  had,  and  speechless  raptures  in 
hearing  of  him !  How  thick  with  gold  the 
air  of  evenings  has  been,  spent  with  him  and 
one  who  loved  him !  I  recall  one  glorious 
summer's  day,  when  an  old  friend  and  I  (we 
were  then,  alas!  years  and  years  younger 
than  we  are  to-day),  had  toiled  on  through 
mountain  heather  for  hours,  until  we  were  half- 


,OF  TH» 

TJNIVHRSrH 


168  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

baked  by  the  sun  and  famished  with  thirst. 
Suddenly  we  came  upon  the  topmost  peak  of 
all  the  hills,  and  saw,  many  miles  away,  the 
unexpected  sea.  As  we  stood,  shading  our 
eyes  with  our  hands,  my  companion  chanted 
out,  "  Obliquely  to  the  right  lay  the  many- 
languaged  town  of  Liverpool ;  obliquely  to 
the  left  *  the  multitudinous  sea/  "  "  Whose  is 
that?"  I  asked  eagerly,  notwithstanding  my 
drought.  "  What  isn't  Shakespeare's  is  De 
Quincey's."  " Where  did  you  find  it?"  "In 
the  Opium -eater"  I  remember  cursing  my 
memory  because  I  had  forgotten  that  passage. 
When  I  got  home  I  looked  through  the  copy  I 
then  had,  and  could  not  find  the  sentence.  I 
wrote  to  my  friend,  saying  I  could  not  come 
upon  his  quotation.  He  answered  that  he  now 
believed  it  did  not  occur  in  the  body  of  the 
Confessions,  but  in  a  note  in  some  edition, 
he  could  not  remember  which.  What  a  sense 
of  miserable  desolation  I  had  that  this  edition 
had  never  come  my  way ! 

There  are  only  three  marks  of  any  kind  in 
my  present  copy  of  the  Confessions,  one  dealing 


THE  ENGLISH  OPIUM-EATER.  1U9 

with  the  semi- voluntary  power  children  have 
over  the  coming  and  going  of  phantoms  painted 
on  the  darkness.  This  mark  is  very  indistinct, 
and,  as  I  remember  nothing  about  it,  I  think  it 
must  have  been  made  by  accident.  The  part 
indicated  by  it  is  only  introductory  to  an  un- 
marked passage  immediately  following  which 
has  always  fascinated  my  imagination.  It  is 
in  the  "  Pains  of  Opium/'  and  runs  : — 

"In  the  middle  of  1817,  I  think  it  was,  that  this 
faculty  became  positively  distressing  to  me :  at  night, 
when  I  lay  awake  in  bed,  vast  processions  passed  along 
in  mournful  pomp,  friezes  of  never-ending  stories,  that 
to  my  feelings  were  as  sad  and  solemn  as  if  they  were 
stories  drawn  from  times  before  (Edipus  and  Priam — 
before  Tyre — before  Memphis.  And  at  the  same  time 
a  corresponding  change  took  place  in  my  dreams : 
a  theatre  seemed  suddenly  opened  and  lighted  up  within 
my  brain,  which  presented  nightly  spectacles  of  more 
than  earthly  splendour." 

How  thankful  we  ought  to  be  that  it  has 
never  been  our  fate  to  sit  in  that  awful  theatre 
of  prehistoric  woes !  There  is  surety  nothing 
more  appalling  in  the  past  than  the  inter- 
minably vain  activities  of  that  mysterious 


170  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

atomic,  Egyptian  man.  Who  could  bear  to 
look  upon  the  three  hundred  thousand  ant- 
like  slaves  swarming  among  the  colossal  mono- 
liths piled  up  in  thousands  for  the  pyramid  of 
Cheops !  The  bare  thought  makes  one  start 
back  aghast  and  shudder. 

I  find  the  next  mark  opposite  another  awful 
passage  dealing  with  infinity,  on  this  occasion 
infinity  of  numbers,  not  of  time  : — 


"  The  waters  now  changed  their  character, — from 
translucent  lakes,  shining  like  mirrors,  they  now  became 
seas  and  oceans.  And  now  came  a  tremendous  change, 
which,  unfolding  itself  slowly  like  a  scroll,  through 
many  months,  promised  an  abiding  torment ;  and,  in 
fact,  it  never  left  me  until  the  winding- up  of  my  case. 
Hitherto  the  human  face  had  mixed  often  in  my  dreams, 
but  not  despotically,  not  with  any  special  power  of 
tormenting.  But  now,  that  which  I  have  called  the 
tyranny  of  the  human  face  began  to  unfold  itself. 
Perhaps  some  part  of  my  London  life  might  be  answer- 
able for  this.  Be  that  as  it  may,  now  it  was  that  upon 
the  rocking  waters  of  the  ocean  the  human  face  began 
to  appear  :  the  sea  appeared  paved  with  innumerable 
faces,  upturned  to  the  heavens — faces  imploring, 
wrathful,  despairing,  surged  upwards  by  thousands, 
by  myriads,  by  generations,  by  centuries." 


THE  ENGLISH  OPIUM-EATER.  171 

Upon  closer  looking,  I  see  an  attempt  has 
been  made  to  erase  the  mark  opposite  this 
passage.  Joining  the  fact  with  the  faintness  of 
the  line  opposite  the  former  quotation  I  am 
driven  to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  only  one 
"  stetted "  note  of  admiration  in  the  book.  It 
is  a  whole  page  of  the  little  volume.  It  begins 
on  page  91,  and  ends  on  page  92.  To  show 
you  how  little  I  care  for  my  copy  of  the 
Confessions,  I  shall  cut  it  out.  Even  a 
lawyer  would  pay  me  more  than  fourpence- 
halfpenny  for  copying  a  page  of  the  book,  and, 
as  I  have  said  before,  the  volume  has  no  ex- 
trinsic value  for  me.  Excepting  the  Bible,  I  am 
not  familiar  with  any  finer  passage  of  so  great 
length  in  prose  in  the  English  language: — 

"The  dream  commenced  with,  a  music  which  now 
I  often  heard  in  dreams ;  a  music  of  preparation  and 
awakening  suspense ;  a  music  like  the  opening  of  the 
Coronation  Anthem,  and  which,  like  iliat,  gave  the  feel- 
ing of  a  vast  march — of  infinite  cavalcades  filing  off — 
and  the  tread  of  innumerable  armies.  Tae  morning 
was  come  of  a  mighty  day — a  day  of  crisis  and  of  final 
hope  for  human  nature,  then  suffering  some  mysterious 
eclipse,  and  labouring  in  some  dread  extremity.  Some- 


172  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

where,  I  knew  not  where — somehow,  I  knew  not  how — 
by  some  beings,  I  knew  not  whom — a  battle,  a  strife,  an 
agony  was  conducting,  was  evolving  like  a  great  drama, 
or  piece  of  music ;  with  which  my  sympathy  was  the 
more  insupportable  from  my  confusion  as  to  its  place, 
its  cause,  its  nature,  and  its  possible  issue.  I,  as  is  usual 
in  dreams  (where,  of  necessity,  we  make  ourselves  central 
to  every  movement),  had  the  power  and  yet  had  not  the 
power,  to  decide  it.  I  had  the  power,  if  I  could  raise 
myself,  to  will  it ;  and  yet  again  had  not  the  power,  for 
the  weight  of  twenty  Atlantics  was  upon  me,  or  the 
oppression  of  inexpiable  guilt.  *  Deeper  than  ever 
plummet  sounded/  I  lay  inactive.  Then,  like  a  chorus, 
the  passion  deepened.  Some  greater  interest  was  at 
stake ;  some  mightier  cause  than  ever  yet  the  sword 
had  pleaded  or  trumpet  had  proclaimed.  Then  came 
sudden  alarms  ;  hurry  ings  to  and  fro  ;  trepidations  of 
innumerable  fugitives,  I  knew  not  whether  from  the  good 
cause  or  the  bad ;  darkness  and  lights ;  tempest  and 
human  faces  ;  and  at  last,  with  the  sense  that  all  was 
lost,  female  forms,  and  the  features  that  were  all  the 
world  to  me,  and  but  a  moment  allowed,  and  clasped 
hands,  and  heart-breaking  partings,  and  then — ever- 
lasting farewells  !  and  with  a  sigh  such  as  the  caves  of 
hell  sighed  when  the  incestuous  mother  uttered  the 
abhorred  name  of  death,  the  sound  was  reverberated — 
everlasting  farewells !  and  again  and  yet  again  re- 
verberated— everlasting  farewells  !  And  I  awoke 
in  struggles,  and  cried  aloud,  'I  will  sleep  no 
more ! * J> 


THE  ENGLISH  OPIUM-EATER.          173 

Upon  reading  this  passage  over  I  am  glad  I 
am  not  familiar  with  any  finer  one  in  English 
prose — it  would  be  impossible  to  endure  it.  In 
these  sentences  it  is  not  the  consummate  style 
alone  that  overwhelms  one,  the  matter  is  nearly 
as  fine  as  the  manner.  How  tremendously  the 
numbers  and  sentences  are  marshalled  !  How 
inevitable,  overbearing,  breathless  is  the  onward 
movement !  What  awful  expectations  are 
aroused,  and  shadowy  fears  vaguely  realized ! 
As  the  spectral  pageant  moves  on  other  cohorts 
of  tiembling  shades  join  the  ghostly  legion  on 
the  blind  march !  All  is  vaporous,  spectral, 
spiritual,  until  when  we  are  wound  up  to  the 
highest  pitch  of  physical  awe  and  apprehension, 
we  stop  suddenly,  arrested  by  failure  of  the 
ground,  insufficiency  of  the  road,  and  are 
recalled  to  life  and  light  and  truth  and  fellow- 
ship with  the  kindly  race  of  man  by  the 
despairing  human  shriek  of  incommunicable, 
inarticulable  agony  in  the  words,  "  I  will  sleep 
no  more !  "  In  that  despairing  cry  the  tortured 
soul  abjectly  confesses  that  it  has  been  van- 
quished and  driven  wild  by  the  spirit-world. 
12 


174  IGNOEANT  ESSAYS. 

It  is  when  you  contrast  the  finest  passages  in 
Macaulay  with  such  a  passage  as  this,  that  you 
recognise  the  difference  between  a  clever  writer 
and  a  great  stylist. 


A  GUIDE  TO  IGNORANCE. 

FOR  a  long  time  I  have  had  it  in  my  mind 
to  write  a  guide  to  ignorance.  I  have  been 
withheld  partly  by  a  feeling  of  diffidence  and 
partly  by  a  want  of  encouragement  from  those 
to  whom  I  mentioned  the  scheme.  I  have 
submitted  a  plan  of  my  book  to  a  couple  of 
publishers,  but  each  of  these  assured  me  that 
such  a  work  would  not  be  popular.  In  their 
straightforward  commercial  way  they  told  me 
they  could  see  "no  money  in  the  idea."  I 
differ  from  them;  I  think  the  book  would 
be  greeted  with  acclaim  and  bought  with 
avidity. 

Novelties  are,  I  know,  always  dangerous 
speculations  except  in  the  form  of  clothes,  when 
they  are  certain  of  instant  and  immense  adop- 
tion. The  mind  of  man  cannot  conceive  the 


176  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

pattern  for  trousers'  cloth  or  the  design  for  a 
bonnet  that  will  not  be  worn.  There  is 
nothing  too  high  or  too  low  to  set  the  fashion 
to  men  and  women  in  dress.  Conquerors 
were  crowned  with  mural  wreaths,  of  which 
the  chimney-pot  hat  is  the  lineal  descendant; 
pigs  started  the  notion  of  wearing  rings  in  their 
noses,  and  man  in  the  southern  seas  followed 
the  example;  kangaroos  were  the  earliest 
pouch-makers  and  ladies  took  to  carrying 
reticules. 

But  an  innovation  in  the  domain  of  educa- 
tion or  thought  is  a  widely  different  thing  from 
a  frolic  in  gear.  It  is  easy  to  set  going  any 
craze  which  depends  merely  or  mostly  on  the 
way  of  wearing  the  hair  or  the  height  of  the 
cincture.  Hence  sestheticism  gained  many 
followers  in  a  little  time.  But  remember  it 
took  ages  and  ages  to  reconcile  people  to 
wearing  any  clothes  at  all.  Once  you  break 
the  ice  the  immersion  in  a  new  custom  may 
become  as  rapid  as  the  descent  of  a  round  shot 
into  the  sea.  The  great  step  was,  so  to  speak, 
from  woad  to  wampum,  with  just  an  Atlantic 


A  GUIDE  TO  IGNORANCE.  177 

of  time  between  the  two.  If  you  went  to  Poole 
any  day  this  week  and  asked  him  to  make  you 
a  suit  of  wampum  he  would  plead  no  insuper- 
able difficulty.  If  you  asked  him  to  make  you 
a  suit  of  woad  he  would  certainly  detain  you 
while  he  inquired  as  to  your  sanity  and  sent  for 
your  friends.  Yet  it  is  only  one  step,  one  film, 
from  woad  to  wampum. 

Up  to  this  time  in  the  history  of  man 
there  has,  with  few  exceptions,  been  an  in- 
fatuated pursuit  of  this  will-o'-the  wisp,  know- 
ledge. Why  should  not  man  now  turn  his 
glance  to  ignorance,  if  it  were  only  for  a  little 
while  and  for  the  sake  of  fair  play  ?  The  idea 
is  of  course  revolutionary,  so  also  is  every  other 
new  idea  revolutionary,  and  (I  am  not  now 
referring  to  politics)  it  is  only  from  revolutionary 
ideas  we  derive  what  we  regard  as  advantages. 
The  earth  and  heavens  themselves  are  revolu- 
tionary. Why  then  should  we  not  fairly  examine 
the  chance  of  a  revolution  in  the  aim  of  man  ? 

The  disinclination  to  face  new  attitudes  of 
thought  comes  from  the  inherent  laziness  of 
man,  and  hence  at  the  outset  of  my  career 


178  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

towards  that  guide  I  should  find  nearly  the  whole 
race  against  me.  Humboldt,  who  met  people  of 
all  climes  and  races  and  colours,  declares  laziness 
to  be  the  most  common  vice  of  human  nature. 
Hence  the  initial  obstacle  is  almost  insuperable. 
But  it  is  only  almost,  not  quite  insuperable. 
Men  can  be  stirred  from  indolence  only  by  a 
prospect  of  profit  in  some  form.  Even  in  the 
Civil  Service  they  are  incited  to  make  the 
effort  to  continue  living  by  the  hope  of  greater 
leisure  later  in  life,  for  with  years  comes 
promotion  and  promotion  means  less  labour. 

By  a  little  industry  in  the  pursuit  of 
ignorance  greater  repose  would  be  attained 
in  the  immediate  future.  It  would  be  very  dif- 
ficult to  prove  that  up  to  this  hour  progress  has 
been  of  the  slightest  use  or  pleasure  to  man. 
Higher  pleasures,  higher  pains.  Complexities 
of  consciousness  are  merely  a  source  of  dis- 
traction from  centralisation.  The  jelly  fish  may, 
after  all,  be  the  highest  ideal  of  living  things, 
and  we  may,  if  the  phrase  be  admitted,  have 
been  developing  backward  from  him.  Of  all 
the  creatures  on  earth  man  is  the  most  stuck 


A  GUIDE  TO  IGNORANCE.  179 

up.  He  arrogates  everything  to  himself  and 
because  he  can  split  a  flint  or  make  a  bow  or 
gun-barrel  he  thinks  he  centres  the  universe, 
and  insists  that  the  illimitable  deeps  of  space 
are  focussed  upon  him.  Astronomers,  a  highly 
respectable  class  of  people,  assert  there  are 
now  visible  to  us  one  hundred  million  fixed 
stars,  one  hundred  million  suns  like  our  own. 
Each  may  have  its  system  of  planets, 
such  as  earth,  and  each  planet  again  its 
attendant  satellites.  With  that  splendid 
magnanimity  characteristic  of  our  race,  man 
would  rather  pitch  the  hundred  million  suns 
into  chaos  than  for  a  moment  entertain  the 
idea  that  he  is  a  humbug  and  of  no  use  what- 
ever. And  yet  after  all  the  jelly-fish  may  be 
a  worthier  fellow  than  the  best  of  us. 

I  do  not  of  course  insist  on  reversion  to  the 
jelly-fish.  In  this  climate  his  habits  of  life 
are  too  suggestive  of  ague  and  rheumatism. 
In  fact  I  do  not  know  that  I  am  urging 
reversion  to  anything,  even  to  the  flocks  of 
pastoral  man.  But  I  am  saying  that  as 
myriads  of  facilities  are  given  for  acquiring 


180  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

knowledge,  one  humble  means  ought  to  be 
devised  for  acquiring  ignorance.  If  I  had 
anywhere  met  with  the  encouragement  which 
I  think  I  merited,  I  should  have  undertaken 
to  write  the  book  myself. 

I  should  open  by  saying  it  was  not  until 
I  had  concluded  a  long  and  painful  inves- 
tigation that  I  considered  myself  in  any  way 
qualified  to  undertake  so  grave  and  important 
a  task  as  writing  a  guide  to  ignorance  :  that  I  had 
riot  only  inquired  curiously  into  my  own 
fitness,  but  had  also  looked  about  carefully 
among  my  friends  in  the  hope  of  finding 
some  one  better  qualified  to  carry  out  this 
important  undertaking.  But  upon  gauging 
the  depth  of  my  own  knowledge  and  consider- 
ing conscientiously  the  capacity  of  my  acquaint- 
ances, I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  no  man 
I  knew  personally  had  so  close  a  personal 
intimacy  with  ignorance  as  myself.  There 
are  few  branches,  I  may  say  no  branch,  of 
knowledge  except  that  of  ignorance  in  which 
any  one  of  my  friends  was  not  more  learned  than 
myself.  I  was  born  in  such  profound  ignorance 


A  GUIDE  TO  IGNORANCE.  181 

that  I  had  no  personal  knowledge  of  the  fact 
at  the  time.  I  had  existed  for  a  long  time 
before  I  could  distinguish  between  myself  and 
things  which  were  not. 

As  a  boy  I  was  averse  from  study ;  and  since 
I  have  grown  to  manhood  I  have  acquired  so 
little  substantive  information  that  I  could  write 
down  in  a  bold  hand  on  one  page  of  this  book 
every  single  fact,  outside  facts  of  personal  ex- 
perience, of  which  I  am  possessed. 

I  know  that  the  Norman  invasion  occurred  in 
1066,  and  the  Great  Fire  in  1666.  I  know  that 
gunpowder  is  composed  of  saltpetre,  sulphur,  and 
charcoal,  and  sausages  of  minced  meat  and  bread 
under  the  name  of  Tommy.  I  am  aware  Milton 
and  Shakespeare  were  poets,  and  that  needle- 
grinders  are  short  lived.  I  know  that  the  pri- 
mest  brands  of  three-shilling  champagnes  are 
made  in  London.  I  can  give  the  Latin  for  seven 
words,  and  the  French  for  four.  I  can  repeat 
the  multiplication  table  (with  the  pence)  up  to 
six  times.  I  know  the  mere  names  01  a  number  of 
people  and  things ;  but,  as  far  as  clear  and 
definite  information  goes,  I  don't  believe  I  could 


IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 


double  the  above  brief  list.  I  am,  I  think, 
therefore,  warranted  in  concluding  that  few  men 
can  have  a  more  close  or  exhaustive  personal 
acquaintance  with  ignorance.  If  you  want 
learning  at  secondhand  you  must  go  to  the 
learned  :  if  you  want  ignorance  at  first  hand  you 
cannot  possibly  do  better  than  come  to  me. 

In  the  first  place  let  us  consider  the  "  Injury 
of  Knowledge/*  How  much  better  off  the  king 
would  be  if  he  had  no  knowledge  !  Suppose 
his  mental  ken  had  never  been  directed  to  any 
period  before  the  dawn  of  his  own  memory,  he 
would  have  no  disquieting  thoughts  of  the 
trouble  into  which  Charles  I.  or  Richard  II. 
drifted.  He  would  be  filled  with  no  envy  of  the 
good  old  King  John,  who,  from  four  or  five 
ounces  of  iron  in  the  form  of  thumb-screws,  and 
a  few  hundredweight  of  rich  Jew,  filled  up  the 
royal  pockets  as  often  as  they  showed  any  signs 
of  growing  empty.  And,  above  all,  he  would 
be  spared  the  misery  of  committing  dates  to 
memory.  How  it  must  limit  the  happiness  of 
a  constitutional  sovereign  to  know  anything 
about  the  constitution  !  Why  should  he  be 


A  GUIDE  TO  IGNORANCE.  183 

burdened  with  the  consciousness  of  rights  and 
prerogatives  ?  Would  he  not  be  much  happier 
if  he  might  smoke  his  cigar  in  his  garden  with- 
out the  fear  of  the  Speaker  or  the  Lord  Chan- 
cellor before  his  eyes  ?  The  Commons  want 
their  Speaker,  the  Lords  want  their  Lord 
Chancellor — let  them  have  them.  The  king 
wants  neither.  Why  should  he  be  troubled 
with  any  knowledge  of  either?  Although  he 
is  a  king  is  he  not  a  man  and  a  brother  also  ? 
Why  should  he  be  worried  out  of  his  life  with 
reasons  for  all  he  does?  The  king  feels  he 
can  do  no  wrong.  That  ought  to  be  enough 
for  him.  Most  men  believe  the  same  thing  of 
themselves,  but  few  others  share  the  faith. 
The  king  can  do  no  wrong,  then  in  mercy's 
name  let  the  man  alone.  Suppose  it  is 
a  part  of  my  duty  to  look  out  of  the  oriel 
window  at  dawn,  noon,  and  sunset,  why  should 
I  be  bored  with  cause,  reason,  and  precedent 
for  this  ?  Let  me  look  out  of  window  if  it  is 
my  duty  to  do  so ;  but,  before  and  after  looking 
out  of  the  window,  let  me  enjoy  my  life. 

Take  the  statesman.     How  knowledge  must- 


184  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

hamper  him  !  He  is  absolutely  precluded  from 
acting  with  decision  by  the  consciousness  of 
the  difficulties  which  lay  in  the  path  of  his 
predecessors.  He  has  to  make  up  his  subject, 
to  get  facts  and  figures  from  his  subordinates 
and  others.  He  has  to  arrange  the  party 
manoeuvres  before  he  launches  his  scheme,  by 
which  time  all  the  energy  is  gone  out  of 
him,  and  he  has  not  half  as  much  faith 
in  his  bill  as  if  he  had  never  looked  at  the 
pros  and  cons.  "  Never  mind  manoeuvring, 
but  go  at  them,"  said  Nelson.  The  moment 
you  begin  to  manoeuvre  you  confess  your  doubt- 
fulness of  success,  unless  you  can  take  your 
adversary  at  a  disadvantage ;  but  if  you  fly 
headlong  at  his  throat,  you  terrify  him  by  the 
display  of  your  confidence  and  valour. 

The  words  of  Nelson  apply  still  more  closely 
to  the  general.  His  knowledge  that  fifty  years 
ago  the  British  army  was  worsted  on  this  field, 
unnerves,  paralyses  him.  If  he  did  not  know 
that  shells  are  explosive  and  bullets  deadly,  he 
would  make  his  dispositions  with  twice  the 
confidence,  and  his  temerity  would  fill  the  foe 


v 

A  GUIDE  TO  IGNORANCE.  185 

with  panic.  His  simple  duty  is  to  defeat  the 
enemy,  and  knowing  anything  beyond  this  only 
tends  to  distract  his  mind  and  weaken  his  arm. 
In  the  middle  of  one  of  his  Indian  battles,  and 
when  he  thought  the  conflict  had  been  decided 
in  favour  of  British  arms,  a  messenger  rode 
hastily  up  to  the  general  in  command,  who  was 
wiping  his  reeking  forehead  on  his  coat-sleeve : 
"  A  large  fresh  force  of  the  enemy  has  appeared 
in  such  a  place  ;  what  is  to  be  done  ?  "  Gough 
rubbed  his  forehead  with  the  other  sleeve,  and 
shouted  out,  "  Beat  'em ! "  Obviously  no  better 
command  could  have  been  given.  What 
the  English  nation  wanted  the  English  army 
to  do  with  the  enemy  was  to  "beat  'em." 
In  the  pictures  of  the  Victoria  Cross  there  is 
one  of  a  young  dandy  officer  with  an  eyeglass 
in  his  eye  and  a  sword  in  his  hand,  among  the 
thick  of  the  foe.  He  knows  he  is  in  that  place 
to  kill  some  one.  He  is  quite  ignorant  of  the 
fact  that  the  enemy  is  there  to  kill  him,  and 
he  is  taking  his  time  and  looking  through  his 
eyeglass  to  try  to  find  some  enticing  man 
through  whom  to  run  his  sword.  One  of 


186  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

Wellington's  most  fervent  prayers  was,  "  Oh. 
spare  me  my  dandy  officers  ! "  Now  dandies  are 
never  very  full  of  knowledge,  and  yet  the 
greatest  Duke  thought  more  of  them  than  of 
your  learning-begrimed  sappers  or  your  science- 
bespattered  gunners. 

If  an  advocate  at  the  bar  knew  one  quarter 
of  the  law  of  the  land,  he  could  never  get  on.  In 
the  first  place,  he  would  know  more  than  the 
judges,  and  this  would  prejudice  the  bench 
against  him.  With  regard  to  a  barrister,  the 
best  position  for  him  to  assume,  if  he  is  address- 
ing a  jury,  is,  "  Gentlemen,  the  indisputable 
facts  of  the  case,  as  stated  to  you  by  the  wit- 
nesses, are  so-and-so.  In  presence  of  so  dis- 
tinguished a  lawyer  as  occupies  the  bench  in 
this  court,  I  do  not  feel  myself  qualified  to  tell 
you  what  the  law  is ;  that  will  be  the  easy  duty 
of  his  lordship."  Even  in  Chancery  cases,  the 
barrister  would  best  insure  success  by  merely 
citing  the  precedent  cases,  in  an  off-hand  way, 
"  Does  not  your  lordship  think  the  case 
of  Burke  v.  Hare  meets  the  exact  conditions  of 
the  one  under  consideration?"  The  indices 


A  GUIDE  TO  IGNORANCE.  187 

are  all  the  pleader  need  look  at.  The  judge 
will  surely  strain  a  point  for  one  who  does  not 
bore  him  with  extracts  and  arguments,  but 
leaves  all  to  himself,  and  lets  the  work  of  the 
court  run  smoothly  and  just  as  the  president 
wishes. 

Knowledge  is  an  absolute  hindrance  to  the 
doctor  of  medicine.  Supposing  he  is  a  man  of 
average  intelligence  (some  doctors  are),  he  is 
able  to  diagnose,  let  me  say,  fever.  You  or  I 
could  diagnose  fever  pretty  well — quick  pulse, 
dry  skin,  thirst,  and  so  on.  But  as  the  doctor 
leans  over  the  patieat,  he  is  paralysed  by  the 
complication  of  his  knowledge.  Such  a  theory 
is  against  feeding  up,  such  a  theory  against 
slops,  such  a  theory  against  bleeding,  such  a 
theory  in  favour  of  phlebotomy ;  there  are  the 
wet  and  the  dry,  the  hot  and  the  cold  methods ; 
and  while  the  doctor  is  deliberating,  vacillating, 
or  speculating,  the  patient  has  ample  oppor- 
tunity of  dying,  or  nature  of  stepping  in  and 
curing  the  man,  and  thus  foiling  the  doctor. 
Is  there  not  much  more  sense  and  candour  in 
the  method  adopted  by  the  Irish  hunting 


188  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

dispensary  doctor,  who,  before  starting  with  the 
hounds,  locked  up  all  drugs,  except  the  Glauber's 
salts,  a  stone  or  two  of  which  he  left  in  charge  of 
his  servant,  with  instructions  it  was  to  be  meted 
out  impartially  to  all  comers,  each  patient  receiv- 
ing an  honest  fistful  as  a  dose  ?  It  is  a  remarkable 
fact  that  within  this  century  homoeopathy  has 
gained  a  firm  hold  on  an  important  section  of 
the  community,  and  yet,  notwithstanding  the 
growth  of  what  the  allopathists  or  regular  pro- 
fession regard  as  ignorant  quackery,  the  span  of 
human  life  has  had  six  years  added  to  it  in 
eighty  years.  Still  homoeopathy  is  a  practical 
confession  of  ignorance;  for  it  says,  in  effect, 
"  We  don't  know  exactly  what  Nature  is  try- 
ing to  do,  but  let  us  give  her  a  little  help,  and 
trust  in  luck."  Whereas  allopathy  pretended  to 
know  everything  and  to  fight  Nature.  Here,  in 
the  result  of  years  added  to  man's  life  by  the 
development  of  the  ignorant  system,  we  see 
once  more  the  superiority  of  ignorance  over 
knowledge. 

How  full  of  danger  to  the  unwedded  men  is 
knowledge   owned   by  the   widow!      She   has 


A  GUIDE  TO  IGNOKANCE.  189 

knowledge  of  the  married  state,  in  which  she 
was  far  removed  from  all  the  troubles  and  re- 
sponsibilities of  life.  She  had  her  pin-money, 
her  bills  paid,  stalls  taken  for  her  at  the  opera, 
agreeable  company  around  her  board,  no  occa- 
sion to  face  money  difficulties.  Now  all  that 
is  changed.  There  is  no  elasticity  in  her 
revenue,  no  margin  for  the  gratification  of  her 
whims;  she  has  to  pay  her  own  bills,  secure 
her  own  stalls ;  she  cannot  very  well  entertain 
company  often,  and  all  the  unpleasantnesses  of 
business  matters  press  her  sorely.  Her  know- 
ledge tells  her  that,  if  she  could  secure  a  second 
husband,  all  would  be  pleasant  again.  It  may  be 
said  that  here  knowledge  is  in  favour  of  the 
widow.  Yes ;  but  it  is  against  the  "  Community/' 
Remember,  the  "  Community  "  is  always  a  male. 
There  is  hardly  any  class  or  member  of  the 
community  that  does  not  suffer  drawback  or 
injury  from  knowledge.  As  I  am  giving  only 
a  crude  outline  of  a  design,  I  leave  a  great  deal 
to  the  imagination  of  the  reader.  He  will 
easily  perceive  how  much  happier  and  more  free 

would  be  the  man  of  business,  the  girl,  the  boy, 
13 


190  IGNOHANT  ESSAYS. 

the  scientist,  the  controversialist,  and,  above  all, 
the  literary  man,  if  each  knew  little  or  nothing, 
instead  of  having  pressed  upon  the  attention 
from  youth  accumulated  experiences,  tradi- 
tions, discoveries,  and  reasonings  of  many 
centuries. 

To  the  "Delights  of  Ignorance/'  1  should 
devote  the  consideration  of  man  devoid  of 
knowledge  under  various  circumstances  and  in 
various  positions. 

By  the  sea  who  does  not  love  to  lie  "  propt  on 
beds  of  amaranth  and  moly,  how  sweet  (while 
warm  airs  lull,  blowing  lowly),  with  half-dropt 
eyelids  still,  beneath  a  heaven  dark  and  holy,  to 
watch  the  long  bright  river  drawing  slowly  his 
waters  from  the  purple  hill — to  hear  the  dewy 
echoes  calling  from  cave  to  cave  through  the 
thick-twined  vine — to  watch  the  emerald- 
coloured  waters  falling  through  many  a  woven 
acanthus  wreath  divine  !  Only  to  see  and  hear 
the  far-off  sparkling  brine,  only  to  hear  were 
sweet,  stretched  out  beneath  the  pine/'  Just  so  ! 
Is  not  that  much  better  than  bothering  about 
gravitation  and  that  wretched  old  clinker  the 


A  GUIDE  TO  IGNORANCE.  101 

moon,  and  the  tides,  and  how  sea-water  is  made 
up  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen  and  chloride  of  sodium 
and  bromide  of  something  else,  and  fifty  other 
things,  not  one  of  which  has  a  tolerable  smell 
when  you  meet  it  in  a  laboratory?  Isn't  it 
better  than  thinking  of  the  number  of  light- 
houses built  on  the  coast  of  Albion,  and  the  ton- 
nage which  yearly  is  reported  and  cleared  at  the 
custom-houses  of  London,  Liverpool,  and  that 
prosperous  seaport  of  Bohemia  !  Isn't  it  much 
better  than  improving  the  occasion  by  reading 
a  hand-book  on  hydraulics  or  hydrostatics  ? 
Who  on  the  seashore  wants  to  know  anything  ? 
There  will  always,  down  to  the  last  syllable  of 
recorded  time,  be  finer  things  unknown  about 
the  sea  than  can  be  said  about  all  other 
matters  in  the  world.  Trying  to  know  anything 
about  the  sea  is  like  shooting  into  the  air  an 
arrow  attached  to  a  pennyworth  of  string  with 
a  view  to  sounding  space.  If  we  threw  all  the 
knowledge  we  have  into  the  ocean  the  Admiralty 
standards  of  high-water  mark  would  not  have 
to  be  altered  one-millionth  part  of  a  line. 

What    a    blessing    ignorance   would    be    in 


192  IGNOKANT  ESSAYS. 

an  inn  !  Who  would  not  dispense  with  a 
knowledge  of  all  the  miseries  that  follow  in 
the  wake  of  the  vat  when  one  is  thirsty,  and 
has  before  him  amber  sunset-coloured  ale,  and 
in  his  hand  a  capacious,  long,  cool-meaning 
churchwarden  ?  Who  would  at  such  a  moment 
cumber  his  mind  with  the  unit  of  specific  gravity 
used  by  excisemen  in  testing  beer  ?  WTio  would 
at  such  a  moment  care  to  calculate  the  toll  ex- 
acted by  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  before 
each  cool  gulp  may  thrill  with  amazing  joy  the 
parched  gullet  ? 

Who,  when  upon  a  journey,  would  care  to 
know  the  precise  pressure  required  to  blow 
the  boiler  of  the  engine  to  pieces,  or  the 
number  of  people  killed  in  collisions  during  the 
corresponding  quarter  of  last  year  ?  Should 
we  not  be  better  in  sickness  for  not  knowing 
the  exact  percentage  of  deaths,  in  cases  of  our 
class  ?  In  adversity  should  we  not  be  infinitely 
happier  were  we  in  ignorance  of  the  chance  we 
ran  of  gaining  a  good  position  or  of  cutting 
our  throats  ?  Should  we  not  enjoy  our  pros- 
perity all  the  more  if  we  were  not,  morning 


A  GUIDE  TO  IGNORANCE.  193 

and  evening,  exercised  by  the  fluctuations  of 
the  share-list,  fluctuations  in  all  likelihood 
destined  never  to  increase  or  diminish  our 
fortunes  one  penny  ?  And  oh,  for  ignorance  in 
sleep  !  For  sleep  without  dream,  or  nightmare, 
or  memory  !  For  sleep  such  as  falls  upon 
the  body  when  the  soul  is  done  with  it  and 
away ! 

But  all  this  is  only  rambling  talk  and  likely 
to  come  to  nothing.  I  fear  I  shall  never  find  a 
publisher  for  my  great  work.  Upon  reading 
over  what  I  have  written  I  am  impressed  by 
the  faintness  of  the  outline  it  displays  of  the 
book.  In  fact  there  is  hardly  any  outline  at  all. 
It  is  no  more  clear  than  the  figures  thrown  by 
a  magic-lantern  upon  a  fog.  I  have  done  no- 
thing more  than  wave  the  sacred  lamp  of 
ignorance  before  your  eyes.  I  daresay  my 
friend  the  jelly-fish  would  shake  his  fat  sides 
with  laughter  if  he  became  aware  of  this  futile 
effort  to  show  how  far  we  are  removed  from  his 
state  of  blissful  calm.  I  feel  infinitely  de- 
pressed and  discouraged.  I  feel  that  not  only 
will  I  not  be  hailed  as  a  prophet  in  my  own 


194  IGNORANT  ESSAYS. 

country,  but  that  the  age  will  have  nothing  to 
do  with  my  scheme.  It  may  be  thought  by 
many  that  there  is  something  like  treason  in  thus 
enrolling  oneself  under  the  banner  of  the  jelly- 
fish. Egypt,  Assyria,  Greece,  Carthage,  and 
Rome  have  gone  back  from  knowledge,  and 
even  the  jelly-fish  does  not  flourish  on  their 
sites.  But  is  the  condition  of  their  sites  the 
worse  for  lacking  the  jelly-fish  ?  Perhaps  the 
"silence,  and  desolation,  and  dim  night"  are 
better  in  those  places  than  the  blare  of  trum- 
pets and  the  tramp  of  man.  So  far  as  we  know 
man  is  the  only  being  capable  of  doing  evil 
or  offending  heaven.  His  absence  may  by 
nature  be  considered  very  good  company. 
Whatever  part  of  earth  he  can  handle  and 
move  he  has  turned  topsy-turvy.  One  day 
earth  will  turn  on  him  and  wipe  him  out 
altogether. 

For  me  and  my  great  scheme  for  the  book 
there  is  no  hope.  Man  has  always  been  ac- 
counted a  poor  creature  when  judged  by  a 
fellow  man  whom  he  does  not  appreciate.  How 
can  I  be  expected  to  go  on  taking  an  interest  in 


A  GUIDE  TO  IGNORANCE.  195 

man  when  not  the  most  credulous  or  the  most 
crafty  publisher  in  London  will  as  much  as  look 
at  my  Guide  to  Ignorance  ?  I  feel  that  my  life 
is  wasted  and  that  my  functions  have  been 
usurped  by  the  School  Board.  I  cool  the  air 
with  sighs  for  the  days  when  a  philosopher 
might  teach  his  disciples  in  the  porch  or  the 
grove.  I  feel  as  if  I  could  anticipate  earth  and 
turn  on  man.  But  some  of  the  genial  good 
nature  of  the  jelly-fish  still  lingers  in  my  veins. 
I  will  not  finally  desert  man  until  man  has 
finally  deserted  me.  I  had  by  me  a  few  scat- 
tered essays  in  the  style  of  the  book  I  projected 
in  vain.  If  in  them  the  reader  has  not  found 
ample  proof  of  my  fitness  to  inculcate  the  philo- 
sophy of  Ignorance  I  shall  abandon  Man  to 
his  fate.  I  have  relieved  my  mind  of  some  of 
its  teeming  store  of  vacuity.  I  can  scarcely 
hope  I  have  added  to  the  reader's  hoard.  But 
it  would  be  consoling  to  fancy  that  upon  lay- 
ing down  this  book  the  reader's  mind  will  if 
possible  be  still  more  empty  than  when  he 
took  it  up. 

THE   END. 


w. 


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